Amid CDC upheaval, key vaccine panel won't convene February meeting

 As recent changes to U.S. vaccine policy face pushback on several fronts, one of the key bodies driving the nation's immunization recommendations is postponing its meeting previously planned for next week. 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC's) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) will push out its February vaccine confab to an undetermined date next month, Bloomberg reported Thursday, citing an unnamed person close to the decision. 

The meeting of the ACIP, which helps advise the CDC on vaccine recommendations for kids and adults—a key factor in securing insurance coverage—was expected to revolve around COVID-19 vaccines and other mRNA shots, Stat reports, citing a person familiar with the plans. 

When reached for comment, a Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) spokesperson confirmed to Fierce that “[w]e will not hold the ACIP meeting later this month.” 

“Further information will be shared as available,” the spokesperson said. 

The meeting delay comes amid a tenuous time for U.S. vaccine policy. The ACIP itself has served as a consistent catalyst for controversy ever since HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ousted all of the panel’s previous sitting members last June, restaffing the group with multiple appointees who have publicly questioned the safety of certain vaccines or critiqued public health policies during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Just last month, the ACIP’s vice chairman Robert Malone, M.D., took to social media to address apparent dissatisfaction with the panel’s ability to clamp down on COVID-19 vaccines, telling one user who called for the removal of all COVID shots from the market that “We are aligned.” 

“I’m not deaf to the calls that we need to get the COVID vaccine mRNA products off the market,” Malone said in an X post at the time. “All I can say is stay tuned and wait for the upcoming ACIP meeting. If the FDA won’t act, there are other entities that will.”

While the ACIP votes on vaccine recommendations, their positions still need to be endorsed by the director of the CDC, who does not have to follow the panel’s lead but often does. That top CDC role is now being headed up by National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya, M.D., Ph.D., on a temporary basis following the departure of the agency’s previous acting director Jim O’Neill earlier this month. 

In the boldest example yet of recent vaccine policy changes in the U.S., the CDC in early January removed six of 17 vaccines from its recommendations for childhood immunization. Specifically, vaccines for flu and COVID, as well as rotavirus, meningitis, hepatitis A and hepatitis B, were axed from the CDC’s guidance. 

In arguing for the move, the HHS noted in an announcement last month that the U.S. previously recommended more childhood vaccines than any peer nation, highlighting the fact that Denmark encourages pediatric immunization against just 10 diseases. 

While the HHS’ spokesperson did not provide a rationale for the postponement of February’s ACIP meeting, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) last week pushed to delay the gathering during oral arguments in its lawsuit challenging the legality of recent ACIP staffing and pediatric vaccine schedule changes, according to Stat. The AAP has been a strident critic of RFK Jr.’s revamped vaccine panel and, in late January, published its own vaccine guidance rebuking the CDC’s new recommendations. 

Besides the AAP's petition to delay the meeting, the HHS missed certain disclosure deadlines required to legally hold the event, Stat reported Wednesday.

https://www.fiercepharma.com/pharma/amid-cdc-upheaval-key-vaccine-panel-wont-have-february-meeting