Alarm as acting CDC director delays report showing Covid vaccine benefits

Key Points:

• A CDC report showing that the Covid vaccine reduced emergency room visits and hospitalizations by about half for healthy adults last winter has been delayed by acting CDC director Jay Bhattacharya, a Trump administration appointee, due to concerns over the study’s methodology.
• The delay has sparked fears among experts and former CDC officials that the Trump administration, under Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is using behind-the-scenes tactics to undermine vaccine research and recommendations.
• The CDC study used a long-established “test-negative design” methodology, which has been employed in numerous vaccine studies for two decades, including a recent flu vaccine report published just before the Covid vaccine report was set to appear.
• Kennedy, a vocal Covid vaccine critic, has made significant changes to the Department of Health and Human Services, including firing vaccine advisory committee members and replacing them with vaccine-skeptical individuals, leading to protests and resignations among CDC staff.
• CDC officials maintain that reviewing and flagging methodological concerns before publication is routine, but experts view the blocking of this vaccine effectiveness report as a troubling escalation of political interference in public health science.