Kennedy’s vaccine advisers weigh COVID-19 shot recommendations

ATLANTA (AP) — Access to COVID-19 shots is the big question as Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s new vaccine advisers meet again Friday, after putting off a controversial vote on a different vaccine for newborns.

People in many states already are reporting frustration as they they try to determine, or prove, if they qualify for updated COVID-19 vaccines — even as infections have climbed over the past month.

The Food and Drug Administration recently put new restrictions on this year’s shots from Pfizer, Moderna and Novavax, reserving them for people over 65 or younger ones who are deemed at higher risk from the virus. Now advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have to take the next step, recommending who should seek them, a move that influences insurance coverage and how pharmacists in certain states can administer them.

Unclear is whether the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which Kennedy stocked with members critical of coronavirus vaccination, will urge additional curbs.

“We’re anxiously awaiting what’s going to happen,” said Dr. Phil Huang, a family physician who directs the Dallas County health and human services department. The panel’s decisions especially affect low-income families who receive shots through the federally funded health programs but, he added, “it’s causing just a lot of confusion” for the public.

The panel opened the second day of its meeting with continued confusion over a question it left hanging Thursday — whether to end a longstanding CDC recommendation that all newborns be vaccinated at birth against a liver virus, hepatitis B.

The panel had been considering whether to recommend delaying that initial vaccination — something doctors and parents already can choose to do. But amid criticism from independent pediatric and infectious disease specialists who say the vaccine is safe and has helped infant infections drop sharply, the advisers decided Friday to postpone that decision.

On Thursday, the panel recommended a new restriction on another childhood vaccine.

They recommended that for children under 4, their first dose of protection against MMR — measles, mumps and rubella — and chickenpox should be in separate shots, not a combination version known as MMRV. Since 2009, the CDC has said it prefers separate shots for initial doses of those vaccines and 85% of toddlers already do.

On Friday, the committee also recommended that the government’s Vaccines for Children program — which covers vaccine costs for about half of U.S. kids — align its guidance with that narrower MMRV usage.

The panel takes up COVID-19 vaccinations as the virus remains a public health threat. CDC data released in June shows the virus resulted in 32,000 to 51,000 U.S. deaths and more than 250,000 hospitalizations last fall and winter. Most at risk for hospitalization are seniors and young children — especially those who were unvaccinated.

Worried about access, leading medical groups including the American Academy of Pediatrics already have issued recommendations that the vaccines be available to anyone age 6 months and older who wants one — including pregnant women — just like in prior years.

Several states have announced policies to try to assure that access regardless of Friday’s ACIP decision. And a group representing most health insurers, America’s Health Insurance Plans, said earlier this week that its members will continuing covering the shots through 2026.

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Neergaard reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Laura Ungar in Louisville, Kentucky, contributed to this report.

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