While America panics, Europe quietly recalibrates Covid-19 vaccine policy

From Sweden to the UK to Australia, countries are narrowing Covid-19 vaccine policies without controversy. In the US, the same debate has triggered warnings of a catastrophe.

As of 1 September, Sweden no longer recommends Covid-19 vaccination for children unless an individual medical assessment finds they are at increased risk of severe disease.

Even then, it is only available with a doctor’s prescription.

Adults are eligible for a single dose only if they are 75 and older, or belong to defined risk groups.

It is a strikingly cautious policy — yet in Sweden, there is no sense of crisis. Public health officials describe it as a proportionate step, aligned with the evidence.

By contrast, in the United States, the temperature has been rising over the narrowing of Covid-19 vaccine policy. The medical establishment has long been hostile toward Health Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr, but in recent weeks the attacks have escalated.

This week in the New York Times, nine former directors of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warned that his decisions mean “children risk losing access to lifesaving vaccines.”

On ABC TV, outgoing CDC official Dr Demetre Daskalakis intensified the rhetoric, claiming he “only sees harm coming” for America’s children. The language was deliberately alarming and intended to signal an emerging catastrophe.

Dr Demetre Daskalakis, former director, CDC National Center for Immunization & Respiratory Diseases, on ABC “This Week.”

In reality, though, the policies under review in the US look more like a belated effort to bring American practice closer to what Europe has already done.

The CDC’s own data illustrate why recalibration makes sense.

Figures show that the risk of children dying from Covid-19 equates to roughly 1 in 810,000 per year (0.000123%) — an infinitesimally low risk.

It’s even lower for children without underlying conditions, closer to 1 in 1.75 million (0.000057%).

Despite these tiny mortality figures, Daskalakis warned that half of infants hospitalised for Covid-19 last season had “no underlying conditions.”

But that claim paints a distorted picture.

A Covid-19 hospitalisation is defined as “a positive SARS-CoV-2 test ≤14 days before admission or during hospitalisation,” meaning any child treated for a broken arm or routine surgery but testing positive, is still counted as a Covid case.

When researchers examined hospital charts more closely, they found roughly 30% of paediatric Covid-19 admissions were ‘incidental’ – in other words, they were hospitalised with Covid, not for Covid.

CDC’s adult data showed a similar pattern.

Other countries ahead of the curve

Across Europe and beyond, other nations are moving in the same direction as Sweden.

The United Kingdom has also tightened eligibility as it heads into autumn, limiting Covid boosters to people over 75, nursing-home residents, and those with weakened immune systems.

Its guidance notes that “in the current era of high population immunity to Covid-19, additional Covid-19 doses provide very limited, if any, protection against infection and any subsequent onward transmission of infection.”

These are targeted, risk-based policies aligned to measurable benefits.

Australia, too, has shifted. In May, the Department of Health quietly updated its immunisation handbook to state that healthy children and adolescents under 18 without medical conditions no longer need the Covid-19 vaccine.

There was no press conference, no ministerial statement, no media blitz. And most notably, no outrage from the medical establishment.

Taken together, these changes show nations with advanced health systems are adjusting policies in response to the evidence.

Unlike in the US, no one accuses countries like Sweden, Britain, or Australia of ‘sacrificing children’ by narrowing access to Covid-19 vaccines.

Hepatitis B on the radar

On September 18-19, the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) will meet to vote on various issues, including the current hepatitis B schedule.

Daskalakis warned that at its upcoming meeting, ACIP might “try to change the birth dose,” arguing that public health only gets “one bite of that apple” to vaccinate newborns against hepatitis B.

But several advanced European programs already do not give a universal day-one dose.

Instead, they target it to babies of mothers who test positive for hepatitis B, since most are screened in hospital, and begin routine doses later in infancy.

Denmark follows this approach. It is mainstream policy, endorsed by national health authorities, and no one suggests Danish babies are being left unprotected.

Scrutiny, not sabotage

The criticism of ACIP has been fierce.

Current members are branded as “dangerous” or anti-vaccine when their real offense is pressing for increased scrutiny and asking difficult questions. That is what an advisory committee is meant to do.

Kennedy is accused of sabotaging access to vaccines, but his approach is simply a call for the ‘gold standard’ science that Americans were promised by this administration.

As FDA Commissioner Marty Makary said this week, the CDC is a “broken” agency. That is why proportional policies and humility matter.

The way forward is not to alarm Americans with talk of bans or lost access to vaccines. It is to deliver risk-based, evidence-driven recommendations, as peer nations already do, and to be candid about uncertainty.

That is how public health begins to rebuild trust…the trust Kennedy says he now hopes to restore.

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See Kennedy’s recent announcement: