ATLANTA (AP) – Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s New Vaccine Advisor It added confusion to Covid-19 vaccinations this fall on Friday.
Until now, vaccinations have been recommended as a routine autumn step for almost every American.
The Food and Drug Administration has already imposed new restrictions This year’s shot They are booking them for people over the age of 65 who are deemed at higher risk from the virus from Pfizer, Moderna and Novavax.
In a series of votes on Friday, advisors from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention took the unprecedented step of not recommending them even in high-risk groups like the elderly. Instead, they decided that people could make individual decisions after talking to doctors, nurses or pharmacists.
The panel also urged the CDC to adopt a stronger language on its vaccine risk claims despite pushbacks from external medical groups that said shots from billions of doses administered worldwide have proven safety records.
The split panel narrowly avoided asking the state to request a prescription for shots. The move comes after protests from some advisors that additional steps would block access to vaccinations.
Dr. Cody Meissner, a panelist at Dartmouth University, said he “has to wait a year” to meet his primary care provider. “It’s going to be a barrier in nature.”
The conference represents the latest example of Kennedy’s months of efforts to reshape the country’s vaccine policy to match his long-standing doubts about the safety and efficacy of established shots.
Independent public health experts responded to relief that the panel didn’t add any obstacles to vaccinations, but they said the lack of recommendations would be confusing for those who are unsure whether the shot would benefit them.
“The good news is that everyone can get this vaccine. The bad news is that even if you’re in a high-risk group, no one is encouraged to get it,” said Dr. Paul Offit, a children’s hospital in Philadelphia, a vaccine researcher and former government advisor who has saved money with Kennedy for years.
Dr. Sean O’Leary of the American Academy of Pediatrics said the panel’s day discussion included clear efforts to distrust vaccines that “have real-time impacts on American children.”
But he said people could follow instead Guidelines from him and other medical groups It is still making specific recommendations for the vaccine.
“It was a very strange meeting,” O’Leary said.
Some states Worried about Friday’s decision, they announced a policy that would ensure access. And the group representing most health insurance companies, America’s health insurance plans, said earlier this week that its members will continue to cover the shots until 2026.
The panel’s decision must still be sent to the interim director of the CDC. Jim O’Neillfor sign-off. O’Neill, a former investor, health regulations critic and Kennedy’s representation at HHS, recently took the lead in the agency following the sacking of the director announced in the Senate. Susan Monares.
Covid-19 remains a threat to public health. CDC data released in June shows that the virus led to 32,000 to 51,000 US deaths and over 250,000 hospitalizations last fall and winter. Most of the risk of hospitalization is in the elderly and young children, especially those who have not been vaccinated.
Although the Covid-19 vaccine is not complete, CDC data shows that it provides the strongest protection against severe infections and death, even if people are still infected. Similarly, as the virus continues to evolve, people can get COVID-19 repeatedly.
Similar to the flu vaccine, Covid-19 shots are updated annually, but last year only around 44% of seniors and 13% of children were the latest in coronavirus vaccinations, the CDC said.
This meeting was more freewheel and more confusing than in the past. Many committee members challenged the CDC data and raised questions about research on other concerns that mice and the agency themselves did not believe safety monitoring was reliable.
The panel recommended that CDCs add information about risk and uncertainty to the vaccine sheets they are given to patients.
“I don’t think the impact on access is as dramatic as they were,” said Dr. Jesse Goodman of Georgetown University, former chief of FDA vaccines. “But it’s a lot of uncertainty and the negative impact on public trust continues.”
The risk already on the vaccine label is a rare side effect called myocarditis. A type of heart inflammationit was discovered early in the 2021 vaccination. On Friday, scientists studying whether people with certain genes are susceptible to the risks told the panel that the Trump administration had cancelled his grant before the study was over.
The Covid-19 discussion was just one issue the panel tackled during the two-day meeting. In other steps:
– Advisors have postponed a decision on whether to end the long-standing CDC recommendation that all newborns will be vaccinated at birth against the liver virus, hepatitis B.
The panel was considering whether to recommend delaying the initial vaccination — something doctors and parents already have a choice — but it was drawn back amid criticism from independent pediatric illness experts who said the vaccine was safe and helped infantile infectious diseases drop sharply.
– On Thursday, the panel recommended new restrictions on another pediatric vaccine.
They recommended that children under the age of 4 should have their first protective doses for MMR, measles, mumps and chicken and separate shots rather than the combined version known as MMRV. Since 2009, the CDC has said it prefers individual shots for early doses of these vaccines and what 85% of infants already do.
On Friday, the committee also recommended that the government’s children’s vaccine program (which covers vaccine costs for about half of children in the US) coordinate its narrow MMRV use and its guidance.
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Neergaard was reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Matt Pelon of Washington and Jonelle Aletcia of Temecula, California, contributed to the report.
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The Associated Press School of Health Sciences is supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institution’s Department of Science and Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. AP is solely responsible for all content.
