President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday calling for reshaping children’s vaccine recommendations so that they are spaced out in separate medical visits.

Per the White House fact sheet, the executive order recommends that children get vaccines for 11 diseases, not 18, as recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2024. It also recommends separating the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine (commonly known as MMR) into three different shots administered in separate doctor visits, according to the White House Fact Sheets.

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Donald Trump held up a diagram of a baby getting 72 injections during Monday’s press conference in the Oval Office.

Separate measles, mumps and rubella vaccines for children are not available or licensed in the U.S., according to the CDC. The new Trump recommendation comes at a time when cases of measles are increasing across the country, which doctors say is due to lack of vaccine uptake.

Dr. Paul Offit, the director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, told HuffPost these recommendations echo what Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has pushed for in the past. In January, Kennedy advocated cutting childhood vaccines down to 10, but a federal judge struck it down on March 16.

The White House fact sheet does not specify which seven diseases were dropped from the universal recommendation list. Offit said three vaccines — rotavirus, COVID and flu — were shifted to “shared clinical decision-making,” meaning they’re now considered optional rather than routine. Four others — RSV, hepatitis A, hepatitis B and meningococcal — are likely limited to high-risk groups only.

“[It] doesn’t make sense,” Offit said. “Everybody’s at risk.”

Offit is also the co-inventor of the rotavirus vaccine.

In terms of why the executive order is calling for the MMR shot to be separated, Offit points to the disproven claims that Kennedy and Trump have made between vaccines and autism.

“Why would you ever want to separate the vaccine into its three component parts? Because Robert F. Kennedy Jr. doesn’t believe in any of those studies, that’s why,” Offit said. “He has this fixed, immutable belief that vaccines cause autism.”

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Trump holds a "Gold Standard Childhood Vaccine Recommendations" sign during an executive order signing in the Oval Office on Monday.

The executive order also recommends that 1-year-old children should have their shots done across five separate visits. Trump did not specify whether he meant all the vaccines they receive or specific ones.

Offit pushed back on the idea that spreading out vaccines is safer for children’s immune systems. He said what matters is not the number of vaccines a child receives, but the number of “immunological challenges” contained in them. Immunological challenges describe when the immune system malfunctions.

“The two vaccines I got as a child in the early 1950s — the whole-cell pertussis vaccine and the smallpox vaccine — had about 3,200 immunological challenges combined,” he said. “Today, children get fewer than 160 immunological challenges across all 18 vaccines we give by age 18.”

The order does not formally override the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) or the CDC, but does refer to its recommendations as the “Gold Standard.”

“What he really means is: I’m going to try and force studies to fit my fixed, immutable belief that vaccines cause harm, and then I’m going to market them by calling it the ‘Gold Standard,’” Offit said.

“This executive order does not have the force of law,” Offit said. “Pay attention to groups like the American Academy of Pediatrics, which put out recommendations based on good science. They don’t have to use terms like ‘gold standard.’ They’re not trying to sell anything.”

Offit added that the order should not change what happens at a family’s next pediatrician visit.

“Insurance companies are going to continue to cover these vaccines as always. This is just a stone passing through the water.”

The American Academy of Pediatrics held a press call Monday afternoon, where its president, Dr. Andrew Racine, and a member of the AAP’s Committee on Infectious Diseases (COID), Dr. Aaron Milstone, both said the order’s most immediate effect would be to sow confusion among parents, rather than improve safety and health.

When asked on the call to address recurring concerns about the vaccines, including claims that children receive as many as 72 to 79 shots, Racine pushed back.

“The fact is that they are being protected against 17 or 18 diseases, depending on the formulation of certain vaccines you get, and they get about 30 vaccinations during the course of their lives from zero to 18 years of age,” he said. “I don’t know where the number 79 comes from.”

Racine also argued that spacing out vaccines across multiple visits will make it harder, not safer, for families and children to be fully vaccinated.

“The more visits you have to do, the more time you have to take off, the more you have to take children out of school,” he said. “This is just going to make it more and more difficult for people to get the vaccines that they need.”

When asked to comment on the executive order, the White House referred HuffPost to the president’s comments in the Oval Office.