Key Points to Monitor at the Upcoming CDC Vaccine Committee Meeting
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is set to experience significant changes, with the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) seeing a shift in leadership and potential alterations to the childhood vaccine schedule.
In a surprising turn of events, subject-matter experts will no longer present to ACIP. Instead, they will be elevated to a leadership level within the organisation. This change comes after the ousting of Dr. Susan Monarez as CDC director, who testified that her removal was partly due to her refusal to rubber-stamp recommendations made by ACIP.
Dr. Monarez's successor, Dr. Debra Houry, has expressed concerns about the broad scope of the work group's responsibilities, with HHS lawyers raising legal concerns. Some scientists who used to work under Dr. Houry have stopped putting their names on papers and have refused to speak about vaccines, citing personal targeting for misinformation.
The ACIP committee's decisions might get final sign-off from US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime vaccine skeptic, or his deputy, Jim O'Neill, who is currently acting CDC director. This has raised concerns among vaccine advocates, who fear that the committee could remove the recommendation for the hepatitis B vaccine or recommend that children receive their first dose at age 4, instead of at birth.
The hepatitis B vaccine is currently given to newborns in 117 of WHO's member states, and experts argue that universal vaccination, along with prenatal testing of mothers, has been a phenomenal success. Dr. James Campbell, vice chair of the American Association of Pediatrics' Committee on Infective Diseases, stated that only vaccinating children around the time of birth has brought chronic hepatitis B infections down.
However, the number of reported babies who caught hepatitis B around the time of birth has dropped into the double digits. This has led to a vote scheduled for Thursday concerning the hepatitis B vaccine, which is typically given to newborns. The CDC reviews posted ahead of this week's ACIP meeting showed that the birth dose of hepatitis B vaccines in babies was very safe.
The committee's name remains the same, but members, processes, and the data presented have all changed. One of the most notable changes is the appointment of Dr. Retsef Levi, a professor at MIT, to lead the Covid-19 work group. Levi has previously made unsubstantiated claims about vaccines causing serious harm, including death, among young people.
On Wednesday, the White House rejected the notion that big changes were coming to the childhood vaccine schedule. However, there are signs that the group could restrict access to Covid-19 vaccines even further. Making recommendations around this season's updated Covid-19 vaccines is ACIP's main order of business. The U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) is likely to confirm the immunization schedule recommendations made by the advisory committee led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in the next few days.
In the midst of these changes, it remains to be seen how the ACIP's decisions will impact public health and vaccination rates in the United States.
