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Major Medical Groups, Not CDC, Issue This Year’s Flu, COVID and RSV Vaccine Recommendations

By Plainly Now News Desk AI-generated article

With the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)’s usual vaccine advisory panel still tied up in court, five of the country’s largest medical organizations published their own recommendations on Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2026, for who should get a flu, COVID-19 or RSV vaccine this fall and when to get it.

The recommendations came from the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the Infectious Diseases Society of America, working through the Vaccine Integrity Project — an evidence-review effort led by the American Medical Association and based at the University of Minnesota’s CIDRAP infectious-disease center. The findings were published in JAMA.

Key facts

  • Who: American Academy of Pediatrics, American Academy of Family Physicians, American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and Infectious Diseases Society of America, via the Vaccine Integrity Project
  • What: New flu, COVID-19 and RSV vaccine recommendations, published in JAMA
  • When: Published Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2026
  • Why: The CDC’s own advisory panel, ACIP, has not met since December 2025
  • Flu: Everyone 6 months and older; enhanced version for adults 65+
  • COVID-19: Updated vaccine for all adults 19+, and higher-risk children
  • RSV: One-time shot for older/high-risk adults; timed shot for pregnant women; antibody treatment for some infants
  • Evidence base: 299 eligible studies out of more than 17,000 screened; no new safety concerns found

Timeline

  • May 2025 — HHS issues a directive changing federal COVID-19 vaccine recommendations, later stayed by a court ruling
  • June 2025 — Kennedy replaces ACIP’s sitting members with his own appointees
  • July 2025 — CDC issues the flu-vaccination guidance still listed as current
  • December 2025 — ACIP last meets
  • January 2026 — HHS rewrites the childhood vaccine schedule, cutting recommended vaccines from 17 to 11
  • February 2026 — ACIP’s planned meeting is called off after missing a legally required public notice
  • March 16, 2026 — Judge Brian E. Murphy rules for the American Academy of Pediatrics and other plaintiffs, staying Kennedy’s ACIP appointments, the committee’s votes and the childhood-schedule rewrite
  • March 2026 — An FDA (Food and Drug Administration) advisory panel votes to update the flu vaccine formula for subclade K
  • Aug. 5, 2026 — FDA approves Moderna’s mRNA flu vaccine, mFLUSIVA
  • Aug. 10, 2026 — President Trump signs an executive order endorsing the blocked childhood-schedule cut
  • Sept. 2, 2026 — Five medical groups publish their own flu, COVID-19 and RSV vaccine recommendations

Why medical groups stepped in

The groups stepped in because the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP — the panel that normally sets the government’s seasonal vaccine guidance — has not met since December 2025. The panel’s planned February 2026 meeting was called off after it failed to post the legally required public notice, amid the wider turmoil over Kennedy’s overhaul of the committee.

The American Academy of Pediatrics and other groups sued Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over his overhaul of the committee. On March 16, 2026, U.S. District Judge Brian E. Murphy of Massachusetts ruled for the groups, staying — pausing, in legal terms — three things:

  • The appointments Kennedy had made to a reconstituted ACIP, after he replaced the panel’s sitting members with his own appointees in June 2025
  • The votes that reconstituted committee had taken since then
  • A separate January 2026 rewrite of the childhood vaccine schedule that had cut the number of universally recommended childhood vaccines from 17 to 11

The same injunction also stayed a May 2025 HHS directive that had changed federal COVID-19 vaccine recommendations, according to a statement from the American Academy of Pediatrics and other plaintiffs in the case. The judge found the changes likely violated federal law. HHS has appealed to the First Circuit Court of Appeals; as of this week, no ruling on that appeal had been issued.

Months later, on Aug. 10, 2026, President Trump signed an executive order endorsing HHS’s blocked plan to cut the childhood vaccine schedule from 17 recommended diseases to 11 — a separate dispute from the flu, COVID-19 and RSV recommendations described in this article, but one that shows the administration continues to back the changes the court paused.

Where the CDC and insurance stand now

The CDC itself has not issued new flu, COVID-19 or RSV recommendations for the 2026-27 season. Its website still lists the flu-vaccination guidance from July 2025 as remaining in effect — everyone 6 months and older should get an annual flu shot, with an enhanced version for people 65 and older — but the agency has not addressed COVID-19 or RSV vaccination for this season.

Insurance coverage for these shots is not expected to change in the meantime: health plans, Medicare, Medicaid and the federal Vaccines for Children program are legally required to keep covering vaccines at the levels in place as of January 2025, regardless of which body currently issues the seasonal recommendation, according to health-policy reporting on the court case.

What the new guidance recommends

  • Flu: Matches the CDC’s existing guidance — everyone age 6 months and older should get a flu shot, and adults 65 and older should get an enhanced version, either a higher-dose shot, one with an added ingredient that boosts the immune response (adjuvanted), or one made with a different production method that doesn’t use eggs (recombinant), when available.
  • COVID-19: Goes further than the CDC’s current stance. The groups recommend an updated vaccine for all adults 19 and older, and for children 6 to 23 months old and children 2 to 18 who are at high risk of severe illness. The CDC’s current approach instead asks parents of children under 18 to make an individual decision with their child’s doctor.
  • RSV: Covers three groups:
  • Adults 75 and older, and adults 50 to 74 who have conditions that raise their risk, are recommended a one-time RSV vaccine.
  • Pregnant women are advised to get an RSV vaccine at 32 to 36 weeks of pregnancy, timed to the RSV season that runs roughly from September through March, so the protection passes to the baby before birth. ACOG has widened this recommended window from its earlier guidance, citing longer RSV seasons.
  • Infants under 8 months whose mothers did not get that vaccine — and so did not pass on the protection — should instead receive one of two monoclonal antibody treatments, nirsevimab or clesrovimab, lab-made antibodies given directly to the baby rather than a vaccine.

The Vaccine Integrity Project said the recommendations were based on a review that screened more than 17,000 publications down to 299 eligible studies on flu, COVID-19 and RSV vaccines, published mostly between August 2025 and June 2026. The review found no new safety concerns for any of the three vaccines.

AAFP president Dr. Sarah Nosal said October is the best time to get a flu shot, since protection can fade over the course of the season if the shot is given too early. Getting vaccinated later than October, the groups said, is still better than skipping a flu shot altogether.

A new kind of flu shot

Separately, the FDA approved the first mRNA-based flu vaccine to reach the U.S. market this year. Moderna’s mFLUSIVA won standard approval on Aug. 5, 2026 for adults 50 to 64, and accelerated approval — a faster track that requires Moderna to complete a follow-up study — for adults 65 and older. In the company’s late-stage trial of more than 40,000 adults 50 and older, the shot was reported to be 26.6% more effective than a standard-dose flu vaccine at preventing infection, though it also came with a higher rate of side effects. Moderna said it expected the vaccine to be available at select retailers ahead of this fall’s flu season.

Why this year’s flu strain matters

Much of this year’s flu concern centers on a mutated version of H3N2 flu known as subclade K, which became the dominant strain during the 2025-26 season. It emerged in Europe after last year’s vaccine strains had already been chosen, so that season’s shot didn’t match it well. The CDC says there is no evidence subclade K causes more severe illness than other flu strains — the concern is that it spreads faster and partly slipped past last year’s vaccine, adding to the overall amount of illness.

To address that mismatch, an FDA vaccine advisory panel voted in March 2026 to update this season’s flu vaccine formula, including a new H3N2 component intended to better match subclade K — the same 2026-27 flu vaccine covered by the flu recommendation described above.

Sources and further reading

This article is health information written for a general reader. It is not medical advice, and it is not a substitute for talking to a qualified professional about your situation. Do not start, stop, or change a medication or treatment based on an article here. Reading Plainly Now does not create a doctor-patient relationship of any kind. In the United States, call 911 in an emergency, or call or text 988 if you are in crisis; elsewhere, contact your local emergency or crisis service. See our Terms of Service for the full disclaimer.

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