FDA Cancelling Flu Vaccine Panel Meeting Sparks Reaction From Senate

A Food Drug and Administration (FDA) vaccine advisory committee meeting scheduled for March to select the strains to be included in next season’s flu shot has been canceled.

Federal health officials notified members of the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee of the cancellation, according to committee member Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. However, even Dr. Offit said there was no offered explanation for the scrapped meeting.

The cancellation comes as the United States is in the midst of a severe flu season. 86 children and 19,000 have died this season, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

“I’m quite shocked,” Norman Baylor, a former director of the FDA’s Office of Vaccine Research and Review, said in an email. “As you know, the VRBPAC is critical for making the decision on strain selection for the next influenza vaccine season.”

The FDA meetings are important because the flu virus changes yearly, and the vaccine must be updated to provide the best protection. Deciding on the strains during springtime gives vaccine manufacturers enough time to produce the shots and have them ready by fall.

Drugmakers supplied the U.S. with an estimated 148 million doses of flu shots, according to the CDC. It’s unclear what the canceled meeting will mean for people in the U.S. who want to get a flu vaccine next season. Even then, it remains unclear what the canceled meeting will mean for people in the U.S. who want to get a flu vaccine next season.

On Friday, a World Health Organization (WHO) advisory committee is scheduled to meet on which strains should be included in the next flu vaccines in the Northern Hemisphere, which typically influenced the FDA’s strain selection. In January, President Donald Trump issued an executive order to begin the process of withdrawing the U.S. from the WHO, only for federal health officials to be later ordered to stop communicating with the WHO.

The canceled meeting is likely to add to concerns among scientists that anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — secretary of the U.S. Department of Human and Health Services (HHS) — could undermine the vaccine regulatory process in the U.S., possibly leading to a resurgence of preventable diseases.

Lawrence Gostin, director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University, said this is a “clearly emerging pattern to undermine, even eliminate, scientific advisory committees at HHS.”

“I fear that Secretary Kennedy is implementing his long held skepticism of science and scientific evidence,” Gostin said.

On Wednesday, Texas health officials reported that an unvaccinated child in the state died from the measles, the first reported death from a virus in a decade. An outbreak in the state has led to at least 124 cases with mostly children being affected.

“It’s a bad day for infectious diseases,” said Dr. Ofer Levy, director of the precision vaccines program at Boston Children’s Hospital, who has advised the FDA on vaccines.

According to Bloomberg News, “Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy, a Republican, said the Food and Drug Administration’s move threatens to undermine public confidence in government health policy, a key tenet of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s plans for the agency. The senator had pressed Kennedy on his vaccine views in his confirmation hearing.”

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