Hochul fends of RFK Jr. COVID vaccine limits for New Yorkers with executive order

Dave Goldiner, New York Daily News on Sep 5, 2025

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NEW YORK — Gov. Kathy Hochul on Friday signed an executive order ensuring continued access to COVID-19 vaccines in New York after Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took steps to limit availability of the shots.

The governor’s measure declares a health emergency and authorizes pharmacists to continue providing the vaccines to anyone who wants them at their local drug stores in the Empire State.

“In the absence of federal leadership, we must do everything we can to ensure that New Yorkers have access to the vaccines and preventative healthcare they have come to rely on,” Hochul said in a statement.

Hochul’s order permits New York pharmacists and doctors to prescribe the new version of the COVID-19 vaccine for the upcoming season to anyone over three years old, even if they don’t have any underlying conditions.

Even though the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic is past, state health officials say the shots still provide important and potentially life-saving protection for those who get them, and help to defend immunocompromised fellow New Yorkers.

“Vaccination remains one of the most effective tools we have to prevent serious illness, hospitalization, and death from COVID,” said New York State Health Commissioner Dr. James McDonald.

The order will be in effect valid for 30 days while the state comes up with a permanent policy framework, possibly in coordination with other state governments.

Hochul acted just a day after RFK Jr. sparred with senators on both sides of the political aisle at a tense Senate committee hearing over his steps to restrict vaccine access.

He denies the charges, saying all Americans who need protection of the shots can still get them.

The executive order is intended to undo significant limits that federal health authorities imposed at the behest of RFK Jr., a longtime skeptic of vaccines in general and the COVID shots in particular.

Under Kennedy’s authority, the Food and Drug Administration recently approved updated versions of the COVID vaccine, but only for people over 65 or those with underlying medical conditions. Children are only eligible for the shots if a medical provider gives the go-ahead.

Those federal restrictions are tighter than in past years, when the COVID vaccine was generally available to any adult who wanted it.

Public health experts say the shift is part of a broader campaign against vaccines inspired by RFK Jr., especially the mRNA vaccines like those that effectively ended the global pandemic.

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