HHS postpones Feb. 25–27 CDC vaccine advisory meeting amid agency shakeup

The Department of Health and Human Services announced Thursday that the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which had been scheduled to meet Feb. 25–27, will not be held as planned and that no new date has been set. “Further information will be shared as available,” an HHS spokesperson said.

The delay comes as HHS under Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has pursued a rapid reworking of national vaccine policy, actions that have included dropping broad recommendations for COVID‑19 and hepatitis B shots, expanding federal support for state vaccine exemptions and reducing funding for mRNA‑vaccine research. Those moves, agency officials and others say, have upended the traditional role of ACIP, the independent panel that has funneled U.S. vaccine guidance into official policy since 1964.

ACIP recommendations typically shape health insurance coverage, state school vaccine requirements and what doctors tell patients, giving the committee an outsized effect on daily medical practice. The panel was also disrupted last year, when its membership was overhauled and 17 members were removed, and it was effectively sidelined earlier this year when the department unilaterally trimmed the list of pediatric vaccine recommendations without the panel’s input.

Officials and people familiar with internal planning say the now-postponed session likely would have included discussions of COVID‑19 vaccines and other mRNA‑based immunizations. “The meeting likely would have included discussions on Covid‑19 vaccines and other mRNA‑based immunizations,” one person familiar with the plans told reporters. Another person familiar with the situation said the postponement followed HHS guidance, and a separate source said committee members had not been notified of the change as of Wednesday night.

The timing complicates a leadership transition at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC director post is in flux, and a Trump administration official said National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya will step in as acting CDC director, replacing acting director Jim O’Neill. ACIP recommendations must be approved by the CDC director or by the HHS secretary to become official policy, a procedural safeguard that is now shadowed by the leadership uncertainty.

The department’s move has stirred frustration among agency staff. At an internal meeting where ACIP plans were raised, an official urged unity and relayed praise from the White House; staff reaction was described as muted by a source present. Separately, recent controversies over mRNA vaccine policy have spilled into regulatory decisions: a top Food and Drug Administration official recently overruled agency reviewers in refusing to review Moderna’s application for a new flu shot, a decision that the company said was later reversed.

HHS has not posted a formal public notice of the postponement on the customary schedules for federal advisory committees, and requests for additional details have gone unanswered. With one of ACIP’s three regular annual meetings now delayed, public health groups, state immunization programs and clinicians will be watching for when, and how, the department will restore the advisory process and whether pending vaccine recommendations will be considered under a new chain of command.