The American Academy of Pediatrics issued its own 2025–26 immunization schedule on 19 August, recommending that all children aged six to 23 months receive a COVID-19 vaccine and that older children at heightened risk also be immunised. It is the first time in roughly three decades that the academy’s guidance has departed from the CDC schedule, which—after a June shake-up of its advisory panel—no longer urges routine COVID shots for healthy children. AAP President Susan J. Kressly said the new schedule is “rooted in science and in the best interest of infants, children and adolescents,” while committee vice-chair Dr. James Campbell acknowledged the move could prove confusing but called it necessary to protect youngsters ahead of respiratory-virus season. The decision widens an increasingly public rift with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who earlier dismissed all 17 members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, removed COVID-19 recommendations for healthy children and pregnant women, and terminated 22 federal mRNA-vaccine contracts totaling almost $500 million. An HHS spokesman accused the academy of “undermining national immunization policymaking,” and Kennedy asserted that AAP’s stance reflects pharmaceutical donors rather than children’s health. Independent analyses released this month by the University of Minnesota’s CIDRAP Vaccine Integrity Project found no new safety signals for pediatric COVID, influenza or RSV vaccines, conclusions the AAP cited in drafting its schedule. Other medical societies are expected to follow with their own guidance, leaving physicians and parents to navigate diverging recommendations at a time when polling shows public trust in traditional health authorities at historic lows.