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The first meeting of an influential US government vaccine advisory panel scheduled to take place after Robert F Kennedy Jr was appointed the country’s top health official has been delayed.
The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which is organised by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention three times a year to advise on the rollout of new and updated jabs, was set to convene between February 26 and February 28, but the meeting was delayed.
A spokesperson for the Health and Human Services department said the delay was to “accommodate” for public comment ahead of the meeting, adding that “the ACIP work groups met as scheduled this month and will present at the upcoming ACIP meeting”. But the department official declined to confirm when the rescheduled meeting would take place.
The postponement of the meeting will add to fears about how Kennedy, who as a campaigner sowed doubt about vaccines and sued drugmakers, claiming certain jabs caused harm to patients, will steer US government health policy. Agencies, including the CDC and Food and Drug Administration, have been thrown into turmoil by mass lay-offs in recent weeks.
Kennedy was approved as HHS secretary by the Senate last week in a 52-48 vote, with Republican Senator Mitch McConnell, a polio survivor, casting the only dissenting vote from his party. Kennedy secured the backing of reluctant Republican senators by promising to avoid shaking up vaccine policy.
Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy, who was viewed as potential holdout, said he eventually backed Kennedy’s confirmation after he “committed that he will work within current vaccine approval and safety monitoring systems and not establish parallel systems”.
But in an address to HHS staff earlier this week, Kennedy said he was convening a “Make America Healthy Again” commission “to study the causes for the drastic rise in chronic disease”. He added that “some of the possible factors we will investigate were formerly taboo or insufficiently scrutinised”, including childhood vaccination schedules, the use of antidepressants and ultra-processed foods.
As part of the ACIP meeting this month, advisers were due to review 10 vaccines that were approved or are being studied in clinical trials, including jabs for Covid-19, Lyme disease and flu, according to a draft agenda. The next ACIP meeting is scheduled for June.
