CDC’s vaccine advisers meet this week. Here’s how they could affect policy : Shots

The members of the Vaccination Practices Advisory Committee meet at the siege of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia. In June.

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Ben Hendren / Bloomberg / Getty Images

Who should get pictures made this fall? And should all babies be vaccinated against hepatitis B at birth?

These are two of the questions that a federal federal vaccine influence group, the advisory committee for vaccination practices, is expected to contact a meeting Thursday and Friday at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. The panel Provides advice To the director of the CDC on how vaccines should be used to prevent diseases in the American population.

Their recommendations determine the vaccines offered free of charge as part of the Vaccines for Children program and what many health insurers must cover. They also influence national and local laws on the requirements of vaccines.

Many health and medical experts are watching closely – and with concern – since the Secretary of Health Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Stacked the panel With members who question the safety of long -standing established vaccines and have made critical declarations of the current vaccine policy, saying that it had eroded public confidence.

Susan Monarez, the director of the CDC ousted, who served in the post for 29 days before being dismissed by Kennedy at the end of August testified during a congress hearing on Wednesday That Kennedy had forced him to put pressure on the committee’s recommendations. She said he told her that the calendar of the childhood vaccine “would change from September, and I needed to be on board.”

She too declared There is “a real risk that recommendations may be made to restrict access to vaccines for children and others in need without rigorous scientific review”.

Kennedy has also eliminated or expelled numerous members of the career CDC who support the Committee and Professional medical groups prohibited Like the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association to serve their traditional roles As an expert links to the Advisory Committee.

Here are three things to watch:

1. Hairy vaccination access could be eliminated or narrowed

The Committee is late for vaccines wet this year. Food and Drug Administration approved fall boosters Two weeks ago – To say that those who are 65 and over, or who have high -risk medical conditions are eligible. Shops have already arrived in certain pharmacies and doctor’s offices.

Given the discrepancy between FDA approval and a CDC recommendation, there has been uncertainty about who should obtain vaccines and access differs from state to state.

But health experts fear that when the group votes, they could recommend limits that would make people more difficult for people to obtain photos cocovated this fall.

“People are always hospitalized. People are still dying. The figures are smaller, fortunately, but that does not mean that they left,” said Dr. Yvonne MaldonadoProfessor of pediatrics at Stanford Medicine Children’s Health and one of the former members of the AIPI, Kennedy dismissed: “If we can prevent hospitalization or death, we must allow people to make this choice and to make it.”

The panel understands people who say that coastal vaccines have injured or killed a lot, even if it did not stimulate with evidence.

“The idea that there have been dozens of dead or other unrecognized damages that have been swept away under the carpet is not aligned with what we saw during the cocovio pandemic, concerning the continuous meticulous examination of vaccines throughout their introduction” Jason SchwartzAssociate professor of health policy at the Yale School of Public Health.

2. The hepatitis B vaccine can no longer be recommended for infants

Hepatitis B, a viral infection that attacks the liver, cannot be healed. And the hepatitis B virus – more transmissible than HIV and capable of masking the immune system – can remain hidden in the body for years. A Stroke series Starting just after birth can prevent viral infection that causes liver and cancer disease.

But during the APIP meeting in June, chairman of the committee Martin Kulldorff questioned The need for all babies to receive the vaccine. “Unless the mother is positive of hepatitis B, an argument could be advanced to delay the vaccine for this infection, which is mainly distributed by sexual activity and intravenous drug use,” he said.

Screening for pregnant women for hepatitis B has been recommended for a long time, said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, former CDC director in Biden administration during a gathering of health journalists this month. But history shows “it was not infallible,” she said. “It failed our children.” Before the universal recommendation of the vaccine in 1991, Thousands of children were infected each year.

Since then, cases of Hepatitis B has dropped – From more than 20,000 cases per year to less than 1,000. “We saw this general protection which protected a whole generation of children, so that by aging and they had risks and risks, they did not obtain hepatitis B,” explains Dr. Su Wang, internist and researcher specializing in hepatitis at the Cooperman Barnabas Medical Center in New Jersey.

The defenders expected the vaccines to continue to protect the young generations and have turned their efforts to gaps in diagnosis and treatment In the elderly, in order to eliminate hepatitis B by 2030. “This is a goal that is doable, because we have all the tools,” explains Wang.

During Wednesday’s hearing with Monarez, Senator Bill Cassidy, R-La. ,, pleaded to maintain the recommendation that infants get the blows. Cassidy, who was a hepatologist practicing for more than 20 years before entering politics, noted that the current recommendation “is not a mandate” but gives parents the choice to obtain the vaccine for their baby and to make him pay.

“There are people who would otherwise be dead if these parents did not have the opportunity to have their child vaccinated,” he said.

3. Age limit for the infantile MMRV vaccine could change

During the ACIP meeting in June, President Martin Kulldorff Make a presentation suggesting that the combined vaccine for measles, mumps, rubella and chickenpox (or chickenpox) should not be given to children under the age of 4.

The combination vaccine has a slightly higher risk of causing fevers that can cause crises in children under the age of two, compared to Ror and chickenpox vaccines separately.

These febrile crises are temporary, explains Dr. Lakshmi Panagiotakopoulos, pediatrician and former co-chief of the COVVI-19 vaccine working group of the ACIP. “They don’t put their lives in danger. Most do not continue to have other complications,” she said.

Data from the CDC vaccine safety monitoring system show that no problem of this type has been found in children over 4 years of age.

In fact, the CDC in 2009 recommended giving the first doses of measles and vaccines against chickenpox separately to young childrenAlthough parents can choose to get the combined vaccine if they wish. Some parents can find it more practical than having to come back for a separate blow.

Recommend against the vaccine for children under the age of 4 would limit access to a sure way to prevent serious illnesses in children, explains Panagiotakopoulos. “We studied all of this, so much and so in depth,” she said about CDC vaccine staff.

When this committee ceases to recommend a vaccine, insurers are no longer required by federal law to cover it. This could make a vaccine much more expensive and less available.

And while Kennedy invoiced the Panel for the Restoration of Public Confidence, public health experts fear that the religit of past vaccination policies, in the absence of new sciences or security concerns, has the opposite effect. “It decreases the coverage of vaccines, the decrease in the confidence of vaccines, confidence in health professionals and science in general,” explains Panagiotakopoulos.

This could lead to less healthy communities and more people who die from avoidable diseases. “This will not happen overnight, but it will begin to erode the ability that we must prevent completely avoidable diseases in our young children,” explains Maldonado, “it will be a tragedy and will be very difficult to reverse.”