A key vaccine advisory committee met for the first time under new U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a leading voice in the U.S. anti-vaccine movement.
Tuesday’s meeting was, to some extent, business as usual, though with a major question looming: Who would evaluate the committee’s recommendations?
The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices’ two-day meeting took up vaccine policy questions that had been put on hold when the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services abruptly postponed the panel’s February meeting.
“It will be striking” if the meeting is routine, given “signals and alarms” that suggest changes and perhaps reductions in federal vaccination efforts, said Jason Schwartz, a Yale University health policy researcher who studies government health agencies.
But Tuesday’s meeting started fairly routine, with most members joining through a webcast. They discussed an mpox vaccine and how the winter flu and COVID-19 seasons were going.