STAT NEWS – Four members of the 19-person expert panel that advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on vaccination policy have been informed that their status as special government employees has been terminated — a development that throws into question their ability to continue to work on the body, STAT has learned.
The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices has been in the crosshairs of health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who recently preempted the group’s plan to revise guidance on use of Covid-19 vaccines at its next scheduled meeting in late June by issuing his own recommendations — which was unprecedented.
It is not clear whether the terminations are the result of political machinations, or of a bureaucratic slip-up due to cuts to the number of staff in the offices that handle the issuance of special government employee contracts.
Though members of ACIP are appointed to four-year terms, their SGE contracts must be renewed annually. In the past, those renewals were routine affairs, people familiar with the process said …
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Infectious Disease Docs Slam New COVID Vaccine Recommendations
Data are “abundantly clear”; pregnant women are an at-risk group and should be vaccinated
by Shannon Firth, Washington Correspondent, June 6, 2025
MedPage Today – Infectious disease physicians expressed alarm over how the Trump administration bypassed open and established processes for changing vaccine recommendations, and voiced particular concern over restrictions to COVID-19 vaccines in pregnancy.
During a briefing hosted by the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) on Friday, experts urged clinicians seeking information on COVID vaccination to look to specialty societies for evidence-based guidance in lieu of government websites.
In the last few weeks, the FDA has started to limitopens in a new tab or window COVID vaccine approvalsopens in a new tab or window, limiting their use in healthy people under 65 years of age, and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appeared to unilaterally take down CDC guidanceopens in a new tab or window that recommended their use in pregnant women and healthy children.
For decades, the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) has first weighed in on major changes to vaccine recommendations in public meetings.
“I think that’s the biggest threat here, is the absolute lack of transparency in the decision-making process,” said John B. Lynch, MD, a fellow of the IDSA and medical director of Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.
Lynch, who oversees his hospital’s infection prevention and control program, said the real-world consequences of the updated recommendations are already emerging. When a pregnant healthcare colleague asked him whether she should get the COVID vaccine, he said, “yes, unambiguously.”
“She went to two pharmacies yesterday, and both pharmacies said no,” he said.
Pregnant women are more vulnerable to complications from COVID, noted Flor Muñoz-Rivas, MD, IDSA’s liaison to ACIP …
