Top CDC COVID vaccine expert resigns after RFK Jr. unilaterally restricts access
A top expert at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who was overseeing the process to update COVID-19 vaccine recommendations resigned on Tuesday.
The resignation, first reported by The Associated Press and confirmed by CBS News, comes just a week after health secretary and anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. unilaterally revoked and altered some of the CDC’s recommendations for COVID-19 vaccines, restricting access to children and pregnant people. The resignation also comes three weeks before CDC’s experts and advisors are scheduled to meet to publicly evaluate data and discuss the recommendations for this season—a long-established process that was disrupted by Kennedy’s announcement.
The departing CDC official, Lakshmi Panagiotakopoulos, a pediatric infectious disease expert, was a co-leader of a working group on COVID-19 vaccines who advised experts on the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). She informed her ACIP colleagues of her resignation in an email on Tuesday.
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