PANEL CURBS COVID-19 VACCINE RULES

At a chaotic hearing, key CDC committee also delays action on hepatitis B shots.

- BY CORINNE PURTILL AND JENNY GOLD

HUNDREDS protest at the Israeli Consulate in New York City ahead of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's visit to the U.S.

After a contentious discussion that at times referenced discredited theories, low-quality data and desperate pleas from physicians and patients to rely upon sound science, a key CDC committee opted Friday to weaken its existing recommendations on COVID-19 shots, while punting other vaccine decisions to a later date.

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices voted unanimously to pull back its current unequivocal recommendation that all adults get vaccinated against COVID-19 in favor of a process of “shared clinical decision making,” in which patients are encouraged to speak to a doctor, nurse or pharmacist first.

The group came extremely close to recommending that the COVID-19 vaccine be available by prescription only, with a 6-6 vote broken by chair Martin Kulldorff’s “no” vote. The group also postponed a vote on hepatitis B vaccination indefinitely, with some members arguing that a proposal to delay the first dose did not go far enough.

The two-day meeting’s chaotic atmosphere left even many close observers confused about what decisions the group actually made.

“What we're seeing is what happens when individuals who don’t have a basic understanding about how vaccines are delivered are making these crucial policy decisions for the American public. They don’t know what they're doing,” Dr. Sean O'Leary, chair of American Academy of Pediatrics’ Committee on Infectious Diseases, said Friday during a news conference over Zoom. “What we are getting from ACIP is confusion.”

On Thursday, the committee voted that children under the age of 4 receive the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine and the varicella, or chickenpox, vaccine in two separate shots given at the same time, instead of a single dose.