Matthew McConaughey has drawn ire for his opposition to COVID-19 vaccine mandates for children, specifically for saying that he has held off vaccinating his younger children. The U.S. Surgeon General, however, insists that the “Interstellar” star is wrong.

In an interview on CNN on Tuesday, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy defended vaccinations as “remarkably safe” after almost a year of clinical trials. He also took an opportunity to reiterate a warning to parents that COVID-19 was very much a threat to children.

"Covid is not harmless in our children. Many kids have died, sadly. Hundreds of children, thousands, have been hospitalized," said Murthy.

McConaughey’s comments on Nov. 9 came a week after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the use of Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine for children aged 5 to 11. The actor explained that he, his wife and oldest child, who is 13, are vaccinated, but that he did not feel confident that enough information was available to initiate any vaccine mandate for young kids.

“Right now, I’m not vaccinating my young children, I’ll tell you that," McConaughey said at The New York Times’ DealBook Summit. "I couldn’t mandate having to vaccinate the younger kids. I still want to find out more information.”

After facing backlash for appearing to cast doubt on vaccines at a time when misinformation about their side effects is rife, McConaughey issued a clarifying statement on Nov. 10 over Instagram. McConaughey said that he was only speaking about his wariness of vaccine mandates for younger children.

“When asked my opinion on the subject of children and vaccination mandates I stated, ‘I couldn’t mandate it for kids just yet.’ What was not clear is that I was referring specifically to the 5-11-year-old mandate,” McConaughey wrote over Instagram.

“What is NOT true, and insinuated with the clickbait headlines since, is that I am against vaccinating children at all. This is false. In fact, our eldest 13-year-old son Levi is fully vaccinated for COVID-19.”

There was speculation that McConaughey’s statement had a political element to it. There has been enduring speculation that McConaughey was mulling a run for governor in his home state of Texas against incumbent Greg Abbott after admitting it was a “possible avenue” in an interview on Nov. 4.

Abbott banned COVID-19 vaccine and mask mandates in Texas’ schools and has drawn criticism over the summer as the state’s hospitals filled up with newly infected patients. McConaughey, however, has not yet officially declared his candidacy in Texas’ gubernatorial race in 2022.

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