US CDC advisers to review vaccine guidelines after months-long delay

By Mariam Sunny and Sneha S K

(Reuters) -The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's extracurricular adept sheet volition convene connected Tuesday aft a astir two-month hold and expects to reappraisal guidelines for respective vaccines including recommendations for the adjacent procreation of COVID-19 shots.

The two-day gathering of the Advisory Committee connected Immunization Practices besides plans to sermon the ongoing U.S. measles outbreak that has infected implicit 700 radical this year, mostly among unvaccinated radical successful Texas and New Mexico.

The gathering was abruptly delayed successful February conscionable days aft Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a long-time vaccine skeptic, became caput of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

CDC, which is portion of HHS, said the gathering had been postponed to let for nationalist comment.

Kennedy has denied being "anti-vaccine" and has said helium would not forestall Americans from getting vaccinated. His pledges to support existing vaccination programs helped Kennedy clinch cardinal votes astatine his Senate confirmation hearing.

Louisiana Republican Bill Cassidy, a U.S. legislator and doc from Louisiana, said Kennedy had promised to grant decisions by the CDC's ACIP without changes.

The sheet volition sermon and ballot connected usage recommendations for respective vaccines, including for respiratory syncytial microorganism (RSV) and chikungunya, a mosquito-borne disease.

It volition besides sermon updated COVID shots and whether to constrictive recommendations connected who should person them for the 2025-2026 play to a smaller radical of people.

The bureau presently recommends that individuals aged six months and older should beryllium fixed an updated COVID-19 vaccine, careless of erstwhile inoculations for the disease.

COVID was not connected the archetypal docket for the scheduled February meeting.

Dr. William Schaffner, a liaison to ACIP from the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, said the docket for the gathering suggests it would beryllium a regular yearly discussion.

"The bottommost enactment is: truthful acold truthful good," helium said.

The adept sheet usually holds aggregate meetings a year, reviews technological information and makes recommendations to the CDC director, who indispensable past o.k. them.

"Having regular ACIP meetings allows for vaccine updates to beryllium made, caller vaccines beryllium incorporated into the schedule, and allows the American nationalist to instrumentality clip to perceive and to instrumentality enactment if they would like," said committee seat Dr. Helen Talbot.

(Reporting by Manas Mishra, Mariam Sunny and Sneha S K successful Bengaluru; Editing by Caroline Humer and Bill Berkrot)