U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced on Tuesday that the CDC will no longer recommend COVID-19 vaccines for healthy children and pregnant women. Newsday asked two infectious disease experts from Long Island about the new guidance.

"Very few people in the low-risk groups died and rates are manageable, so from that point of view, I understand the decision that healthy people don't necessarily need the vaccine," said Dr. Bruce Farber, chief of public health and epidemiology at Northwell Health. "While many people may not need multiple shots, the first is still helpful, particularly for children who have never had COVID."

"However, there are certain people, those with high-risk pregnancies and children with underlying health conditions who would very much benefit from it," he said. Farber is concerned the video had no mention of these groups of people. In addition, he said, some parents may want their children to receive the COVID-19 vaccination to reduce the chance they will pass the virus to grandparents and other older family members who are at greater risk.

Dr. Sharon Nachman, chief of pediatric infectious diseases at Stony Brook Children’s Hospital, said once the COVID-19 vaccine is available only to at-risk populations, it may not be accessible at pediatricians' offices anymore, and many pharmacies don’t vaccinate young children.

"Who’s going to be vaccinating those children?" she said. "There’s going to be a lot of hurdles for the American public, and the more hurdles you put in front of people to get a vaccine, the less likely they are to get the vaccine."

Both Farber and Nachman said pulling COVID-19 from the recommended vaccination list places a barrier in front of people who choose to receive it. It may not be covered by insurance.

"Over 50% of all vaccines in the U.S. are given out through the Vaccines for Children program because it’s funded by the federal government," Farber said. "This is taking away choice ... they are not allowing people, pediatricians and public health experts to make these recommendations."

"I think this really is something that’s putting more pregnant women at risk," Nachman said. "When we're vaccinating pregnant women, we're vaccinating them as well as providing protection for their newborns because you cannot vaccinate a newborn."

Nachman said pregnant women can be more susceptible to COVID-19 and other respiratory viruses. "In the 2009 flu pandemic, pregnant women were the ones who were hospitalized more frequently than non-pregnant women, and we saw it with last year's flu epidemic when pregnant women, in fact, more often got sicker than their non-pregnant similar-age populations."

"This really bothers me," Farber said. "We are bypassing experts who have opinions from around the country and have made these careful, methodical decisions based on data. These are rash and unilateral decisions, not based on thoughtful dialogue."

 Nachman called it a "bad precedent."

"These are the very people who know the most about that illness and the vaccines," she said.