FDA restricts Covid vax for healthy adults, children, rescinds emergency use authorizations

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has rescinded the emergency use authorizations for Covid-19 vaccines and tightened eligibility requirements to exclude most healthy adults and children. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said the decision was based on “science, safety, and common sense.”

Under the new policy, people over the age of 65 will still be eligible, while younger adults and children must show they have an underlying health condition such as asthma or obesity that places them at higher risk for serious illness.

“I promised 4 things,” Kennedy wrote on X. “1. to end covid vaccine mandates. 2. to keep vaccines available to people who want them, especially the vulnerable. 3. to demand placebo-controlled trials from companies. 4. to end the emergency.”

“In a series of FDA actions today we accomplished all four goals,” he continued. “The emergency use authorizations for Covid vaccines, once used to justify broad mandates on the general public during the Biden administration, are now rescinded.”

Kennedy added that the FDA has issued new marketing authorizations for at-risk groups: Moderna for ages 6 months and older, Pfizer for ages 5 and up, and Novavax for ages 12 and older.

Vaccine makers also clarified the standards. Pfizer said its authorization applies to individuals ages 5 through 64 who have at least one underlying health condition, while Moderna confirmed the same requirement for ages 6 months through 64. Novavax said that individuals 12 through 64 years” must now ‘have at least one underlying condition that puts them at high risk for severe outcomes from COVID-19 (e.g. asthma, cancer, diabetes, obesity, smoking).”

According to the New York Post, more than 73 percent of Americans had received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine by late 2021.