In At the end of the afternoon of February 26, members of the Food and Drug Administration of the United States (FDA) experts on vaccines received an unusual email. This informed them that their next meeting on March 13 to determine the influenza strains to include during the next flu vaccine – a meeting that occurred every year since the late 1960s, even during the Pandemic – was canceled.
One of the e-mails recipients was Dr. Paul offer, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Philadelphia children’s hospital, co-inventor of the Rotavirus vaccine, and a member of the committee since 2017. “He declared that the meeting had been canceled-not postponed-and there was no evidence that it would be reproduced,” he said. In a statement, the FDA said: “The FDA will make its recommendations to manufacturers in time for the updated vaccines to be available for the 2025-2026 influenza season.”
“I suppose that it will be without the opinion of the independent expert advisory committee,” explains Offit. “I don’t know what it means, who made the decision, or why they made the decision. We were not told anything.
The cancellation one day came before the publication of new data issued by the government showing the high efficiency of the last vaccine against flu to keep children and adults outside the hospital.
Here’s what you need to know.
What the Vaccine Committee does
The Vaccines Advisory Committee and Related Organic Products (VRBPAC) is a group of vaccine experts that make time to examine the data on the annual update of the flu. They do the same for any new vaccine against infectious diseases, as well as organic products that companies hope to sell to the public. The main responsibility of the committee is to discuss the safety and efficiency of these health therapies.
To ensure that the members examine and analyze the data objectively, the committee is independent; Voting members are not active government employees, although government officials join the discussion.
Learn more:: What is the best time to get a flu vaccine?
After examining the data provided by vaccines on the studies that companies have conducted on their vaccines, the Committee votes if it considers that a vaccine should be approved or not. In the case of the annual flu vaccine, they vote on which the strains include in the vaccine, on the basis of the recommendations of the World Health Organization and the data of influenza cases in the southern hemisphere, which goes through its flu season before the northern part of the world.
This process has led to emergency use authorizations and ultimately approvals of COVVI-19 vaccines. The members of the VRBPAC met to discuss data, as they have become available, on each of the new COVVI-19 vaccines; Based on the committee’s recommendations, the FDA then made the final decision on the question of whether the vaccines were sufficiently safe and effective for the public.
What is generally happening after meeting the committee
Once the FDA Commissioner decides to approve a vaccine or update the stumps in a vaccine, the work then moves to the American centers for the control and prevention of diseases (CDC). The CDC has a full vaccination committee: the advisory committee for vaccination practices, or ACIP, which meets several times a year to make recommendations for the childhood calendar and adult vaccines.
Based on this information, the CDC then recommends certain vaccines to the public and describes the frequency and the number of doses. Doctors are almost exclusively on FDA and CDC data during the discussion and administration of vaccines to their patients.
Signs of problems for vaccines
Shortly after Robert F. Kennedy Jr., he became head of the Ministry of Health and Social Services, who oversees the FDA and the CDC, the CDC announced that his meeting of the vaccination committee scheduled from February 26 to February 28 was postponed. Kennedy has been skeptical for a long time of vaccines; He continues to question their security and underlines what he describes as conflicts of interest in the process of examining and approving vaccines.
Learn more:: What to know about the measles vaccine
Not having a discussion and incorporating the advice of independent experts “is worrying”, explains Offit, who also sat on the AICI. “We have the impression that the expertise is not really valued.” Without the work of the FDA and CDC committees, the message is that “doctors and parents should understand it for themselves,” he said. “But there are things discussed during these meetings that most doctors in private practice are not going to intudate alone. This is why they turn to the advisory committees to give them advice and provide this information. »»
Committee members do not always agree. But “it is important to have dissident votes and to have a vigorous discussion to ensure that science behind public policy is well settled,” says Offer. “This is an independent group. It is independent of the pharmaceutical and independent government industry.” Without its advice, this means that the government would make important decisions affecting public health.
New research on the importance of flu vaccines
The cancellation of the meeting came one day before the CDC published its weekly Mmwr Report, a scientific update on the latest news from public health. In the February 27 edition, CDC scientists have published new data on the advantages of flu vaccines in the protection of children and adults against serious complications.
The latest data on the last season of the flu from 2024 to 2025 show that children and adolescents who were vaccinated were up to 78% less likely to be hospitalized for flu than those who were not, and adults who obtained their flu vaccine were up to 55% less likely to be hospitalized.
The report concludes by reiterating the agency’s recommendation that eligible persons should obtain a flu vaccine each year.
