US CDC cuts experts out of panels that develop vaccine policy, Bloomberg reports

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(Reuters) -The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told physician groups, public health professionals and infectious disease experts that they will no longer be invited to help review vaccine data and develop recommendations, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday.

Reuters could not immediately confirm the report. CDC and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.

External experts will no longer be included in the working groups of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, the report said.

“It is important that the ACIP workgroup activities remain free of influence from any special interest groups, so ACIP workgroups will no longer include liaison organizations,” Bloomberg reported, citing an email.

The email also identified the groups as biased “based on their constituency and/or population that they represent,” the report added.

The report comes after Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. proposed overhauling the department by reorganizing several HHS agencies and substantially cutting their workforces.

Last month, Kennedy fired the 17 members of the CDC’s ACIP, which reviews vaccines approved by the Food and Drug Administration before making recommendations to the CDC on their use.

(Reporting by Gnaneshwar Rajan in Bengaluru; Editing by Jacqueline Wong and Michael Perry)