Bengaluru: The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s outside expert panel began a two-day meeting on Tuesday after a nearly two-month delay during which it will review guidelines for several vaccines and discuss narrowing recommendations on COVID-19 booster shots.
The panel will vote on Wednesday about recommendations for three vaccines, including for respiratory syncytial virus and chikungunya, a mosquito-borne disease.
The meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices also plans to discuss the ongoing U.S. measles outbreak that has infected over 700 people this year, mostly among unvaccinated residents in Texas and New Mexico.
The meeting was abruptly delayed in February just days after Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a long-time vaccine skeptic, became head of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
CDC, which is part of HHS, said the meeting had been postponed to allow for public comment.
Kennedy has denied being “anti-vaccine” and has said he would not prevent Americans from getting vaccinated. His pledges to protect existing vaccination programs helped Kennedy clinch key votes at his Senate confirmation hearing.
Republican Bill Cassidy, a U.S. senator and physician from Louisiana, said Kennedy had promised to honor decisions by the CDC’s ACIP without changes.
The CDC director typically signs off on the panel’s recommendations before they are implemented, but the agency does not currently have one.
President Donald Trump nominated Susan Monarez to lead the CDC after withdrawing the nomination of former Republican congressman and vaccine critic Dave Weldon, but she has yet to be confirmed by the Senate.
CDC Chief of Staff Matthew Buzzelli will weigh in instead on the recommendations, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said. Buzzelli had been a trial attorney in the Justice Department’s criminal division.
The panel is expected to discuss whether to narrow recommendations on who should receive updated COVID shots for the 2025-2026 season to a smaller group of people.
The agency currently recommends that individuals aged six months and older should be given an updated COVID-19 vaccine, regardless of previous inoculations for the disease.
COVID was not on the original agenda for the scheduled February meeting.
Dr. William Schaffner, a liaison to ACIP from the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, said prior to the meeting that its agenda suggests it would be a routine annual discussion.
“The bottom line is: so far so good,” he said.
(Reporting by Manas Mishra, Mariam Sunny and Sneha S K in Bengaluru; Editing by Caroline Humer and Bill Berkrot)
