There was a notable absence last week when U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced in a 58-second video that the government would no longer endorse the COVID-19 vaccine for healthy children or pregnant women. The director of the CDC — the person who typically signs off on federal vaccine recommendations — was nowhere to be seen. The CDC, a $9.2 billion-a-year agency tasked with reviewing life-saving vaccines, monitoring diseases and watching for budding threats to Americans' health, is without a clear leader.
Amazon Pharmacy is rolling out new features in hopes of attracting more seniors covered by Medicare’s drug benefit, a potentially lucrative market dominated by CVS Health and Walgreens. Amazon says it is launching a new 'caregiver support feature' that allows its customers to have someone else manage medications on their behalf. Once the caregivers are verified through a secure invitation, 'caregivers can now manage medications for their loved ones,' the company says.
HHS is terminating a contract with drugmaker Moderna to develop a vaccine to protect against bird flu amid the agency's broader efforts to reevaluate therapies that use mRNA technology. The contract, which was worth $590 million, was announced in mid-January, just before President Donald Trump's second term. Moderna said Wednesday that an early-phase trial of its mRNA-based vaccine against H5 bird flu in about 300 healthy adults showed "a rapid, potent and durable immune response."
The federal government has removed COVID-19 vaccines from the list of shots recommended for healthy pregnant women and children, federal health officials announced Tuesday.
A new Annenberg Poll shows that 87% of Americans say the benefit of childhood measles, mumps, and rubella vaccination outweighs the risk, and 67% say they know that MMR vaccines don't cause autism. 2025 may see the highest measles case count in the United States since the disease was officially eliminated in 2000.
The Trump administration wants to bring the production of more drugs, including medicines like antibiotics that may be in short supply, closer to the patient — including inside the hospital. The partnership between some of the nation's top health agencies and a handful of companies, including the Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company, is intended to use artificial intelligence and other tools to make eight drugs in the places where people actually get medical care.