The American College of Cardiology issued new guidance Tuesday that recommends adults with heart disease get vaccinated against respiratory illnesses, including RSV, COVID-19, pneumococcal infection, shingles and influenza. Just weeks out from cold and flu season, the recommendation marks a departure from official U.S. guidance as the Trump administration makes moves to limit vaccine access, particularly for COVID-19 shots.
People living with heart disease are already considered a high-risk group, “no matter what their age,” said Dr. William Schaffner, a spokesperson for the college and a professor of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. He said vaccine-preventable infections can be more serious in people who have underlying chronic heart disease and can disrupt their care.
“It can cause more heart failure, and some of these infections predispose actually to heart attacks,” Schaffner said. “Of course, those are things every cardiologist would like to prevent on behalf of their patients.”
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Cardiologists are urged to either vaccinate their patients themselves or to make a strong recommendation for patients to get vaccinated, the new guidelines said.
Vaccination rates for infectious diseases like COVID have declined in recent years. In a KFF poll published Aug. 1, 6 in 10 U.S. adults said they were not likely to get the updated COVID vaccine, a steep decline since the pandemic began five years ago.
Medical societies like the ACC, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Academy of Pediatrics have historically recommended vaccines to protect people against seasonal viruses.
But this season’s emerging set of guidelines stand out because they contradict statements from Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who founded Children’s Health Defense, an organization that promotes vaccine skepticism. Kennedy has ratcheted up restrictions to vaccine access since the Senate confirmed him in February,including cutting off funding for all mRNA vaccine research and ending national recommendations that pregnant people and children get vaccinated against COVID.
To counter these claims, ACOG and the AAP have each offered their own evidence-based recommendations that pregnant people and children should get vaccinated against COVID to prevent the risk of severe outcomes, including hospitalization and death.
Regardless of how the discourse around vaccination shifts, vaccine recommendations are likely to continue moving forward, said Dr. Eduardo Sanchez, the chief medical officer for prevention at the American Heart Association.
Sanchez said he hoped that hearing another recommendation for getting vaccinated from “yet another credible science-based source of information would add that to the reasons why [people] should trust vaccines and expect that they’re going to benefit.”
Kennedy has also taken steps to control, if not silence, those who have traditionally advised the government on vaccine policies and best practices. On June 9, he fired all members of the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, replacing them with several vaccine skeptics.
“They’re not following the body of science at all,” said Dr. Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist who also directs the Vaccine Integrity Project. Osterholm cautioned that myths and disinformation are “likely to confuse parents and consumers of vaccines.”
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