01/08/2026
On Jan. 5, Acting Director of the CDC Jim O’Neill signed a memorandum that reduced the number of diseases targeted in the childhood vaccine schedule for all children to 11, just one more than Denmark's schedule.
A year ago, the U.S. childhood vaccine schedule had universal recommendations targeting 17 diseases.
Officials justified the decision — which circumvented the normal process for changing vaccine recommendations — by comparing the U.S. vaccine schedule to those of other nations.
We wrote about international vaccine schedule comparisons in December. We found that the recommended schedule in the U.S. was quite similar to that of other high-income nations: https://www.factcheck.org/2025/12/trump-fda-make-misleading-international-vaccine-schedule-comparisons/
