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(TNND) — President Donald Trump celebrated a revision to the government's recommendations for childhood vaccinations that he said would "no longer require 72 'jabs' for our beautiful, healthy children."

But leading medical groups sounded an alarm over the changes as arbitrary and dangerous.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is now recommending routine vaccinations against 11 diseases, down from 17 as of the end of 2024.

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The United States has seen the number of influenza cases climb significantly in December, coming after the most severe flu season since 2018, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said.

It’s not yet clear whether there will be an increase in the total number of people who get the flu this season – or whether more people just got it at once in December – but more than 3,100 people died from the virus in the US in the year ending August 2025, according to the latest data from the CDC.
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Cases of influenza in the United States are rising, driven by a new strain that public health officials worry current vaccines may not protect against as effectively.

Health officials and researchers say that although the flu season has not reached its peak, the spike in cases is not historically unusual — and they stress vaccines probably still offer protection against the worst effects of the strain.

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The United States, a nation of 343 million people with a complex and overburdened health care system, is poised to adopt the childhood vaccine recommendations used in Denmark, a country of six million with universal health care. The decision has alarmed public health experts in both countries.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the U.S. health secretary, is expected to announce the move in the new year. It would reduce the number of immunizations for American children to 10 from 17, radically changing the recommended vaccines without the deliberative process that the United States has relied on for decades.

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Flu is surging across the United States amid a busy holiday travel time.

The state of New York is among those most heavily hit. For the week ending Dec. 20, the state reported its highest number of positive flu cases (71,123) ever recorded in a single week, according to the New York State Department of Health. That represented an increase of 38% over the previous week, the department said.

New York is one of 14 states that reported high or very high activity of outpatient visits to health care providers for influenza-like illnesses for the week ending Dec. 13, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The District of Columbia, New York City and Puerto Rico have also registered high or very high flu-like cases, the agency says.

Seth Berkley, MD, an infectious disease epidemiologist, was the CEO of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance from 2011 to 2023; a co-founder of COVAX, which developed, manufactured, and distributed COVID-19 vaccines; and the founder and CEO of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative.

Dr. Berkley spoke to Infectious Disease Special Edition about his new book, “Fair Doses: An Insider’s Story of the Pandemic and the Global Fight for Vaccine Equity.”

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Cost-effective ways exist to improve your indoor air quality that will reduce your COVID and flu risk, lower your cancer and lung disease risk, and eliminate headaches and sleepiness caused by poor ventilation.

Maybe you’ve been sitting in church or listening to a lecture that, though provocative, sends you into a dozing dreamland, despite getting plenty of sleep the night before. Or maybe you’ve fought to stay awake during a long car ride. These experiences often have as their root cause a common factor – poor indoor air quality caused by a buildup of carbon dioxide because of poor ventilation.

The U.S. reportedly plans to overhaul the country’s childhood vaccine schedule. The move, first reported by CNN, would change how many vaccines to protect against various diseases children get and when they receive those immunizations.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., secretary of health and human services, is a longtime vaccine skeptic and supports altering the vaccine schedule. Recommendations for several vaccines that are currently given routinely to children in the U.S.—including shots for rotavirus, varicella (chickenpox), hepatitis A, meningococcal bacteria, influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV)—could be scrapped entirely under the plans, according to CNN.

Flu season comes around every year, but a new strain is leading many global health experts to worry that this round may be particularly severe. The strain—a version of the influenza A(H3N2) virus—first appeared in surveillance reports in June, 4 months after the 2025-2026 influenza vaccine formulation had already been determined, and has been associated with earlier waves of influenza outbreaks in Canada, Japan, and the UK.

The latest data on respiratory illness in the United States shows that shoppers and merry-makers are spreading more than just holiday cheer: They’re also passing around germs. In many cases, it’s a new virus variant that’s been causing early and busy flu seasons in Asia, Australia and Europe.

The US is on the cusp of finding out what this flu variant, called subclade K, will do. For the week ending December 6 — the first full week after the Thanksgiving holiday — the proportion of doctor’s visits for symptoms including fever plus a cough or sore throat rose to 3.2%, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

When Susan Monarez was sworn in to lead the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the country’s premier public-health agency, many researchers across the country breathed a sigh of relief.

Trained as a microbiologist and immunologist, Monarez had been a non-partisan government scientist for nearly 20 years. She was an unexpectedly uncontroversial choice by US President Donald Trump, who had previously put forward (but later withdrew the nomination for) Dave Weldon, a physician and vaccine sceptic who worked as a Republican member of Congress from 1995 to 2009.

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