CDC vaccine recommendations are at a standstill, and unanswered questions are piling up

NEW YORK (AP) — The Food and Drug Administration recently approved a new flu vaccine that tested well in older adults. But the federal agency responsible for telling doctors and the general public how to use it has made no recommendation on it. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s inaction on the mFlusiva vaccine marks a break in longstanding practice.

It’s also an example of how the agency’s vaccine review-and-recommendation process has been blown up in the past year, grinding decision-making to a halt. Efforts by vaccine-wary officials in President Donald Trump’s administration to scale back shot recommendations have been put on hold. Federal guidance on new vaccines has stopped.

And public discussion of vaccine policy questions that might cross political divides — including whether there’s solid evidence to justify giving fewer shots to kids — has diminished. Kennedy Jr.’s crusade to upend vaccine policy and the legal action opposing it have disrupted longstanding systems that deliver crucial health guidance to Americans, affecting whether people are getting the best available protection against vaccine-preventable diseases. “We find ourselves at a point where even if credible evidence (for a new vaccine policy) has reached a tipping point, we don’t have an obvious mechanism that can formalize that change,” said Jason Schwartz, a Yale University health policy researcher who studies government health agencies.

Many in the medical field praised a court ruling that halted Kennedy’s changes For 60 years, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices guided the CDC’s vaccine recommendations. The committee met publicly, reviewed vaccine data and sought input from various health groups. The panel voted on recommendations that went to the CDC director, who almost always adopted them as the government’s guidance, leading public and private insurers to pay for the shots.

Trump, a Republican, appointed Kennedy to oversee federal health agencies, including the CDC. Kennedy last year dismissed the committee and replaced it with a group that included several anti-vaccine voices. Controversial decisions followed, leading to a lawsuit from the American Academy of Pediatrics and some other medical groups.

In March, a federal judge said Kennedy likely violated federal procedures, stopped Kennedy’s panel from holding further meetin…