Trump signs order that would space out childhood vaccinations in U.S.

U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday that proposes revised childhood vaccine recommendations, emphasizing his belief in spacing out vaccinations into separate medical visits. This directive would recommend administering measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine as three distinct shots during individual visits.

According to a White House fact sheet, the order also directs the nation's health department to enhance vaccine research. The White House reported this development first to The Daily Caller. During a Monday afternoon event at the Oval Office, Trump suggested that one-year-olds should have their shots spaced out into five separate visits, though it remains unclear whether he was referring to all the vaccines given or specific ones.

Public health experts have expressed concerns that spacing out shots as suggested by Trump could increase the risk of children contracting a vaccine-preventable disease before returning for another visit. The safety monitoring of childhood vaccines, including their combination and administration, undergoes rigorous studies, with ongoing safety tracking for years following their use.

Currently, separate measles, mumps, and rubella vaccines for children are unavailable in the U.S. Despite the order calling for revised vaccine recommendations, states, not the federal government, possess the authority to mandate vaccinations for schoolchildren. The order will advise states with school vaccine mandates to consider updating their laws to align with the administration's recommendations.

Last December, Trump ordered the Health and Human Services (HHS) department to review how peer nations approach vaccine recommendations and consider revising U.S. guidance accordingly. In response, HHS cut the number of vaccines recommended for every child, a decision subsequently blocked in court. Over the past months, Trump's administration has largely shifted focus away from vaccine policy, focusing instead on less polarizing topics such as healthy eating and efforts to lower drug prices ahead of November's elections.

Polls indicate that most Americans still support school vaccine requirements, although Republicans are less likely than Democrats to perceive them as crucial. Nonetheless, Trump has been preoccupied with linking autism to vaccines. He has recently intensified pressure on Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to identify the cause of autism, a task Kennedy had previously pledged to accomplish through new research unveiled last year.

Trump directly prodded the health secretary on autism research during a recent Cabinet meeting. "How are you doing on the autism research?" Trump inquired. "We will have an answer for you," Kennedy responded. Scientific consensus and decades of studies have unequivocally proven that there is no link between childhood vaccines and autism.

This order arrives as the country begins new school years and faces a measles outbreak that experts warn could jeopardize the U.S.'s measles elimination status.