A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention vaccine advisory committee meeting scheduled for next week — the first since Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was sworn in — has been postponed, a senior HHS official said Thursday.
The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, was scheduled to meet Feb. 26 through Feb. 28. The group of independent experts convenes three times a year on behalf of the CDC to weigh the pros and cons of newly approved or updated vaccines.
In an emailed statement, Andrew Nixon, a senior spokesperson for HHS, said next week’s meeting was postponed to “accommodate public comment in advance of the meeting.”
“The ACIP workgroups met as scheduled this month and will present at the upcoming ACIP meeting,” Nixon wrote. He didn’t respond to a request for comment on whether the agency had scheduled a new date for the meeting.
The postponement was first reported by Stat News.
The move could put Kennedy at odds with Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., who said earlier this month that Kennedy promised him to give the Senate prior notice before making changes to certain vaccine programs. Kennedy, an anti-vaccine activist, has criticized childhood vaccines.
“If confirmed, he will maintain the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices without change,” Cassidy said in a speech on the Senate floor supporting Kennedy’s HHS nomination earlier this month. Cassidy, who is also a doctor, is the chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, which oversees HHS.
Cassidy’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and a member of the Food and Drug Administration’s independent vaccine advisory committee, said the administration’s move is “in line” with conservative policy roadmap Project 2025.
Project 2025 recommends prohibiting the CDC from issuing guidance on vaccines.
“They don’t want the CDC to be in a position to recommend vaccines for children. They want to eliminate their recommending status,” Offit said. “So I think this might be the first step in that.”
ACIP helps the CDC make recommendations for states and insurers on what vaccines to cover, including childhood vaccinations. The committee’s guidance must be accepted by the CDC director before it’s made official.
The CDC is currently being led by acting director Susan Monarez. President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the agency, Dr. Dave Weldon, a former congressman from Florida and a physician, is awaiting Senate confirmation.
As of early Thursday afternoon, the agenda for the meeting was still available on the agency’s website. The discussion included a presentation and vote on the use of the British drugmaker GSK’s meningococcal vaccine. The agenda also included votes for a new chikungunya vaccine and the recently approved at-home nasal spray for influenza.
Insurance companies are mandated to cover recommended vaccines; however, if the CDC and ACIP don’t make a recommendation for a new vaccine, insurers have the autonomy to decide whether to cover them.
Earlier Thursday, a spokesperson for GSK told NBC News that the company was expecting the meeting to be held as planned.
The news of the postponement was disappointing, a different GSK spokesperson said Thursday afternoon. “Delays to ACIP processes and recommendations can prevent access to FDA-approved vaccines, putting people at risk from preventable diseases,” the spokesperson said.
Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious diseases expert at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee, and a consultant for ACIP, said he only heard about the postponement through the news media.
“I’ve been associated with ACIP for 40 years and I don’t recall a previously postponed meeting” outside of Covid, Schaffner said. “The postponement of a routinely scheduled meeting is concerning.”
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