CDC Awards Pfizer $1.24 Billion for Updated Covid Vaccines
The Trump administration just gave Pfizer another major payday.
For many in the MAHA movement, it is another blow. They hoped President Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Health and Human Services Department (HHS) would confront the devastating carnage of Covid vaccine policy.
Instead, the federal government has just awarded Pfizer new Covid vaccine contracts worth about $1.24 billion.
The contracts cover pediatric and adult doses for fiscal years 2026 and 2027. According to federal procurement records, the pediatric contract carries a ceiling of $735,720,598. The adult contract is valued at about $505.3 million.
The awards come as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) continues to approve updated boosters, while the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has shifted to a vague “individual-based decision-making” standard for many Americans, without anything close to full informed consent. They also come even though public demand has collapsed for shots associated with some of the gravest harms such as cancer, myocarditis and premature death.
Including these two Covid vaccine contracts, public listings show the Trump administration has awarded the infamous corporation about $7.34 billion in federal contract capacity since March 23, 2025.
Low Demand
The CDC awarded the contracts through its Office of Acquisition Services. The hefty size of these awards raises the most basic procurement question: Who is this product for?
CDC’s own numbers show a market the public has largely abandoned.
As of May 9, 2026, only 9.7 percent of children had been reported as being up to date with the 2025-2026 Covid vaccine. Only 3.0 percent of children had a parent who said they definitely planned to get the child vaccinated.
The adult numbers are not much better.
Even older Americans, the group federal officials say receives the greatest “benefit” from the shots, are not rushing to take them. As of March 28, only 22.6 percent of Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries 65 and older had been vaccinated.
The same pattern holds among pregnant women, another group federal officials routinely classify as “at risk.” As of May 9, only 11.1 percent of pregnant women had gotten the booster. Put differently, nearly nine in ten expectant mothers — thankfully! — have declined it.
The agency’s commercial claims data also showed about 20.82 million adult doses administered in retail pharmacies, and about 2.47 million in physicians’ offices, as of April 25.
At CDC’s listed Pfizer prices, the $1.24 billion award would cover roughly 13.6 million to 18 million doses. That figure does not prove the government expects demand to rebound. It proves something more revealing. Even after the public walked away, Washington is still underwriting a large Pfizer Covid vaccine market.
It did the same last season. CDC’s archived 2024-2025 vaccine price list shows separate Pfizer contract vehicles for adult and pediatric Covid vaccines, with adult Comirnaty listed at $69.44 per dose and pediatric Pfizer formulas priced between $48.88 and $99.71 per dose. The 2026-2027 awards do not break from that model, they extend it.
The Pediatric Question
The pediatric award is the most explosive part.
Brian Hooker, chief scientific officer at Children’s Health Defense (CHD), a nonprofit founded by Kennedy, put the objection bluntly. He called it “$1.24 billion for what is essentially a cold in minor children.”
At the same time, the risks are enormous. Federal regulators have long known that mRNA Covid vaccines carry an elevated risk of myocarditis and pericarditis, especially in young males. The FDA added myocarditis and pericarditis warnings to Pfizer and Moderna vaccine fact sheets in June 2021. In 2025, the agency required another labeling update, saying the observed risk was highest in males ages 12 through 24. Notably, one recent major study found myocarditis and pericarditis only among vaccinated children, with zero cases recorded among the unvaccinated.
Nor is Washington’s approach universal. For example, early on into the rollout, several Nordic countries moved away from broad Covid vaccination for healthy children and young people.
Florida broke with the policy as well. In 2022, it became the first state to recommend against Covid mRNA vaccination for healthy children. In 2024, the state went further and advised against mRNA Covid vaccines for all populations.
This magazine has extensively documented links between mRNA shots and a range of serious, often irreversible side effects. Those include neurological and immunological damage, menstrual and other reproductive abnormalities, cancer, and premature death. Federal health agencies dispute broad causal claims in those categories. But to this day, they have not produced the kind of transparent, public accounting that would settle the issue for families who were harmed.
Obviously, the new Pfizer contracts do not answer those questions. They simply move past them.
The ACIP Problem
There are also legal and procedural questions.
The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) plays a central role in vaccine recommendations. Its decisions affect federal programs, insurance coverage, and the Vaccines for Children (VCP) program.
Kennedy moved to reshape ACIP. However, a federal judge later blocked many of his appointments and stayed the votes taken by the reconstituted panel, finding that Kennedy’s overhaul likely violated federal law.
That dispute now hangs over federal vaccine policy.
Dr. Robert Malone questioned whether the CDC can properly use vaccine program funds for these purchases without valid ACIP authorization.
“Use of VFC funds requires ACIP authorization,” Malone told CHD. “But there is no ACIP.”
That claim will likely face pushback. Federal agencies often argue that existing schedules, prior recommendations, and procurement authority allow them to maintain supply.
Still, the question is not trivial. If ACIP is frozen, compromised, or legally disputed, then the public deserves clarity before another billion dollars flow to Pfizer.
The Emergency That Never Ends
The contracts also sit beside a larger shield.
The federal Covid public health emergency ended in 2023. But the liability regime under the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act, known as the PREP Act, did not end with it.
In December 2024, then-outgoing HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra extended the Covid PREP Act declaration through December 31, 2029. It preserved liability protections for manufacturers, distributors, program planners, pharmacists, pharmacy technicians, and other qualified persons involved in covered Covid countermeasures.
That is why the new contracts matter so much.
The government is not merely buying a product. It is buying that product inside a special legal structure that limits ordinary routes of accountability for injuries caused by it.
Kennedy has had time and authority to end that injustice. He knows exactly what it is. In 2023, he described the PREP Act as a shield that allows pharmaceutical companies “to get away with mass murder.”
And yet, now in power, Kennedy has failed to act.
The episode is another reminder that the federal government has no constitutional authority to manage healthcare. As this magazine has long argued, that power must be returned to the states, local communities, and families forced to live with the consequences.
Related:
FDA Reshapes Covid Booster Program, Aiming It at the Most Vulnerable
