Illinois is issuing its own guidance about flu, COVID-19 and RSV vaccinations for this fall – amid continuing confusion over federal vaccine recommendations.

The Illinois Department of Public Health on Thursday released its guidance for this fall respiratory virus season, with recommendations including:

• Flu vaccines for everyone ages 6 months and older.

• COVID-19 vaccines for all adults ages 19 and older; for all children from 6 months to 23 months old; all other children who are in certain risk groups or whose parents want them to get the shot; and all people who are pregnant, planning to get pregnant, or who were recently pregnant.

• RSV vaccines for all adults ages 75 and older; for adults ages 50 through 74 years old who are at increased risk of severe illness if they haven’t already been vaccinated; pregnant people during weeks 32 through 36 of pregnancy if not previously vaccinated; all infants under the age of 8 months old whose mothers didn’t get the vaccine during pregnancy; and children ages 8 months through 19 months old who are at increased risk for severe illness.

The health department adopted the guidance based on recommendations by the state’s Immunization Advisory Committee, made up of doctors and public health experts.

That state committee is now helping Illinois “fill the gap” left by a federal immunization advisory committee that hasn’t met since December of last year as well as “a federal administration that continues to make unprecedented and unpredictable vaccine policy guidance without scientific review,” Dr. Sameer Vohra, director of the Illinois Department of Public Health, said at the state committee’s meeting Wednesday.

“We can’t pause the critical evidence-based processes that guide essential public health practice just because we aren’t getting some of those science-based processes from the federal government,” Vohra said during the meeting.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday evening. The federal immunization advisory committee has not yet met this year because of “ongoing litigation,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The federal government has faced lawsuits over its actions related to vaccines.

Traditionally, states have followed the federal government’s lead when it comes to vaccine recommendations.

But Illinois and other states broke with the federal government last year after U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who’s expressed skepticism over vaccines, fired and replaced all the members of the federal Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. Last year, that reconstituted federal committee decided to no longer recommend COVID-19 vaccines and to instead leave the decision of whether to get the shots up to individuals.

For the flu vaccine this season, the federal government is sticking to its recommendations from last virus season that everyone ages 6 months and older get flu vaccines.

National doctors groups have also stepped in to make vaccine recommendations for the fall virus season in recent weeks. Earlier this month, the Illinois-based American Medical Association and American Academy of Pediatrics joined with other medical groups to announce joint recommendations for flu, COVID-19 and RSV shots.

Illinois’ guidelines for those vaccines, released Thursday, are in line with the medical groups’ joint recommendations.

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