Covid vaccines are once again on the agenda for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine advisory panel.
The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) is scheduled to meet next month and plans to discuss Covid vaccine injuries, as well as potentially vote on recommendations, according to a Federal Register notice for the meeting posted Wednesday.
The panel was entirely appointed by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who last year dismissed all of its previous members. Many of Kennedy’s picks are vaccine skeptics.
Numerous studies have shown the Covid shots are safe and effective.
“Some committee members have made repeated claims about Covid vaccine harms that were either unsupported by verifiable data or reflected clear mischaracterizations of the existing scientific literature,” said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. Last year, Osterholm launched the Vaccine Integrity Project, which serves as an alternative source of vaccine information to the CDC.
“If the committee intends to revisit vaccine safety questions, it has an obligation to do so transparently and rigorously,” he said. “Given past misstatements, members do not deserve the benefit of the doubt.”
Under Kennedy, health officials have taken steps to scale back access to Covid vaccines and have taken a harder line on mRNA, the technology used in the Pfizer and Moderna shots. Kennedy has called the Covid vaccine “the deadliest vaccine ever made.”
In October, the CDC updated its Covid vaccine guidance, recommending the shots for adults 65 and older after they consult a doctor or pharmacist. Previously, the shots were recommended for everyone 6 months and older.
In November, Dr. Vinay Prasad, the Food and Drug Administration’s vaccine chief, told staff in a memo that an internal review found that at least 10 children died “after and because of receiving” the Covid shot. The agency hasn’t publicly released the findings or published them in a peer-reviewed journal.
Earlier this month, the FDA rejected Moderna’s application to review an mRNA-based flu vaccine — though it later reversed course.
A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to a request for comment.
Dorit Reiss, a vaccine policy expert at the University of California Law San Francisco, said the panel does not typically focus on vaccine injuries.
“Vaccine injuries are not a direct part of the committee’s mandates,” Reiss said in an email. “When they make vaccine recommendations, they should consider vaccines risks, and new risks may lead to changed recommendations; but that’s not directly about vaccine injuries.”
The panel does consider risks: In 2021, the CDC convened the advisory panel to discuss emerging reports of a rare side effect, called myocarditis, in teen boys and young adult men after getting an mRNA Covid shot. The panel later weighed whether to space out the first and second doses of the vaccine in younger people.
Reiss said she expects the panel could do one of two things: further narrow its recommendation for Covid vaccines or call for changes to the vaccine’s label to highlight risks, though label changes are typically handled by the FDA.
On Tuesday, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists announced its withdrawal as a liaison group for ACIP, citing concerns about “recent changes that undermine the committee’s scientific integrity and evidence-based approach to vaccine policy.”
In addition to Covid vaccine injuries, the panel will also discuss long Covid and “ACIP recommendation methodology” at its meeting next month, according to the Federal Register notice.