Trump Signs Executive Order Overhauling Childhood Vaccine Recommendations

US President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday recommending a reduction in the number of diseases covered by universal routine childhood vaccination recommendations from 18 to 11.

The order also advocates for splitting the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine into three separate shots, to be administered at separate visits. Separate measles, mumps, and rubella vaccines are currently not available in the US. Marco Cavaleri, head of the European Medicines Agency's Public Health Threats Department, stated that such decisions could lead to immunization gaps, leaving populations vulnerable to outbreaks and fueling mistrust in vaccines.

The order moves recommendations for COVID-19, influenza, rotavirus, meningococcal disease, RSV, and hepatitis An and B away from universal routine vaccination. Some immunizations will remain recommended for children considered at higher risk, while others will be subject to shared clinical decision-making between parents and healthcare providers. The World Health Organization (WHO) chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, stated on Wednesday that the current evidence is unequivocal: vaccines, including the MMR vaccine, are safe and do not cause autism.

He added that delaying vaccines or separating doses unnecessarily does not make vaccination safer and can leave children unprotected. Trump's Health Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has questioned vaccine safety and promoted claims linking vaccines to autism. Trump claimed, without evidence, that the current combined MMR shot could be quite lethal. The executive order is an attempt to reinstate sweeping changes to the vaccine schedule made earlier this year by Kennedy Jr., which a federal judge later halted.

However, an executive order can only offer guidance to agencies and does not change laws or set recommendations. Recommendations from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the federal agency that sets vaccine guidance, remain the same. Noele Nelson, a public health professor at Cornell University, said the primary effect of the order has been adding unnecessary confusion and undermining trust in vaccines.

The US is experiencing a resurgence of measles, with 2,465 confirmed cases reported as of August 6, 2026, after the disease was eliminated over 25 years ago.