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All leaders of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) face tough challenges. But the biggest test for the CDC’s new director, Erica Schwartz, MD, MPH, JD, has arrived before her first day on the job. Schwartz, who has been confirmed but not sworn in, will have to decide how to respond to President Donald Trump’s executive order, issued August 10, calling for children to receive fewer life-saving immunizations. (Szabo, 8/12)

The Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC) and the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA) released a joint statement yesterday saying President Donald Trump’s executive order “Delivering Gold Standard Childhood Vaccine Recommendations for Americans,” is based on anything but gold-standard science. (Soucheray, 8/12)

The Trump administration has thrust vaccine policy back into the headlines just three months before the midterm elections, potentially complicating matters for vulnerable Republicans who are hoping to keep control of Congress. President Trump on Monday doubled down on his attempt to overhaul the childhood vaccine schedule with an executive order aimed at reducing the number of recommended vaccines for the youngest children and breaking the measles, mumps and rubella shot into separate vaccines. (Weixel and Choi, 8/12)

Experts considered the 2024-25 influenza season severe, the most serious since the 2017-18 season. Vaccination against flu protected US adults and children from hospitalization and needing outpatient medical care, according to a paper published last week in Open Forum Infectious Diseases. (Holohan, 8/12)

Pressed recently on whether he might accept responsibility for the resurgence of measles in the country, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fended off any suggestion that his history of promoting vaccine skepticism might be partly to blame. The groups facing these outbreaks were “almost all religious communities that just don’t vaccinate,” he told CNN’s Dana Bash.“It’s hard to blame that on me,” he added. (Rosenbluth, 8/12)