President Donald Trump signed a presidential memorandum on December 5, 2025 directing the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to review “best practices” from peer developed countries for vaccines recommended for all children, and to consider updating the U.S. schedule if foreign approaches are deemed scientifically superior.
President Donald Trump on December 5, 2025 signed a presidential memorandum instructing the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to review childhood vaccines recommended for all U.S. children and compare them with schedules used in other developed countries.
The memorandum says the United States recommended vaccination for all children against 18 diseases as of January 2025, including COVID-19, and describes the U.S. as a “high outlier” among peer nations. It cites Denmark as recommending vaccines for 10 diseases, Japan 14 and Germany 15, and directs HHS and the CDC to review the scientific evidence behind those approaches. If officials determine that peer-country practices are “superior,” the memorandum instructs them to update U.S. recommendations while “preserving access to vaccines currently available to Americans.”
In social media posts, Trump praised the directive as rooted in “the Gold Standard of Science and COMMON SENSE!” and argued that the current U.S. schedule has involved “72 ‘jabs’” for healthy children—an assertion that could not be independently verified from CDC immunization schedules in the available reporting.
The order comes amid broader changes at the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), the panel that makes vaccine recommendations. In June 2025, HHS announced it had “reconstituted” ACIP by removing the committee’s sitting members and later naming new members. In December, ACIP voted 8–3 to move to “shared clinical decision-making” for whether infants born to mothers who test negative for hepatitis B should receive the hepatitis B vaccine at birth; the CDC adopted that recommendation on December 16, 2025. Under the updated guidance, infants born to mothers who test positive for hepatitis B—or whose status is unknown—should still receive the vaccine within 12 hours of birth.
Reporting about a possible broader overhaul has focused on Denmark as a model. The Daily Wire, citing other reporting, said Denmark does not recommend several vaccines that appear on the U.S. childhood schedule, including influenza, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), chickenpox and hepatitis A, and that Denmark begins routine vaccinations at about 3 months of age rather than at birth.
HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon said that details of any changes beyond the memorandum should be treated as “pure speculation” unless confirmed by the department.
Former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb, in comments circulated in media coverage, warned that shifting vaccines away from routine recommendations and into shared clinical decision-making categories could have legal and market consequences, including potentially affecting the liability framework for vaccine makers.
