The next meeting of the committee that advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on vaccines has been delayed, according to the CDC’s website.
The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which met on Sept. 18 and Sept. 19, had been scheduled to convene again on Oct. 22 and Oct. 23.
The CDC’s site now says the dates for the next meeting, slated to be the last one in 2025, are to be determined.
“Official meeting dates and agenda items will be posted on the website once finalized,” a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, the CDC’s parent agency, told The Epoch Times in an email on Oct. 9.
The advisory committee provides advice to the CDC, which the agency typically adopts.
In the September meeting, advisers voted to recommend that the CDC endorse standalone chickenpox vaccination for younger children, rather than a combination vaccine containing a varicella antigen. They also said the CDC should change its broad COVID-19 vaccine recommendation to one that emphasizes individual decision-making.
Acting CDC Director Jim O’Neill signed off on the recommendations on Oct. 6.
Advisers had been slated to vote on pushing back the first dose of the hepatitis B vaccination regimen. It’s currently recommended that the vaccine be administered shortly after birth for infants born to women who test negative for the hepatitis B virus.
They tabled the vote after some advisers said they didn’t see a need for a change, and others indicated that they wanted to look at the entire three-shot series.
President Donald Trump later called for delaying the series until adolescence. Dr. Marty Makary, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), is among others who have voiced support for changing the timing.
Other topics that could be on the agenda of the next advisory committee meeting include COVID-19 vaccines and the measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccine.
Retsef Levi, the adviser serving as chair of the committee’s COVID-19 immunization workgroup, said in the September meeting that the group could in the future offer recommendations on specific vaccines, given data indicating that certain vaccines provide better protection and cause fewer adverse events.
Trump and O’Neill have both said the MMR vaccine should be replaced by separate doses to enhance safety.
“I call on vaccine manufacturers to develop safe monovalent vaccines to replace the combined MMR,” O’Neill wrote on X.
“Standalone vaccinations can potentially reduce the risk of side effects and can maximize parental choice in childhood immunizations,” a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, the parent agency of the CDC and FDA, told news outlets in a statement.
No separate vaccines against measles, mumps, or rubella are currently available in the United States.
“There is no published scientific evidence that shows any benefit in separating the combination MMR vaccine into three individual shots,” Merck, an MMR vaccine manufacturer, told media outlets in a statement. “Use of the individual components of combination vaccines increases the number of injections for the individual and may result in delayed or missed immunizations.”
GlaxoSmithKline, the other company that manufactures the MMR vaccine in the United States, did not respond to a request for comment.