Health officials concerned as FDA cancels meeting to update flu vaccines – PBS NewsHour

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Geoff Bennett

Geoff Bennett

Karina Cuevas

Karina Cuevas

Leave your feedbackThe FDA canceled a critical meeting of flu vaccine experts where officials decide which strains to target in the next vaccine. It comes amid one of the worst flu seasons in 15 years, according to the CDC. Geoff Bennett discussed more with Dr. Paul Offit, one of the FDA committee advisors and director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors.Geoff Bennett:The FDA has canceled a critical meeting of flu vaccine experts, making this the second vaccine policy meeting to be canceled since Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took over as secretary of Health and Human Services.The annual gathering is key. Federal health officials must decide in advance which strains to target in the next vaccine since production takes months. It comes amid one of the worst flu seasons in 15 years, with more than 19,000 deaths, according to the CDC, nearly 100 of them children.We’re joined now by Dr. Paul Offit, one of the FDA committee advisers and director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.It’s good to see you, Dr. Offit.So why was this meeting in particular so critical? And why did the FDA cancel it? What justification did they give?Dr. Paul Offit, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia: Well, it’s critical because it takes about six months to make this vaccine. So, every March, we meet. And we meet with representatives from the World Health Organization, the Department of Defense, the CDC, and we look at a map of the world and we look at how these viruses are moving across that map as a way to predict what strains are likely to come into this country.We then pick strains we think are most likely to cause this coming year’s influenza epidemic. And then the manufacturers, the vaccine manufacturers, then use that information to make the vaccine for what is the six-month production cycle, March to September. So it’s a critical meeting, and it just got canceled.Geoff Bennett:And which justification, if any, was given?Dr. Paul Offit:There was no justification. We don’t know who did it. We don’t know why it was done. We were told later that the FDA will essentially take this in-house. They’re going to make the decision themselves, presumably based on the same information, but we don’t know that.What’s good about this meeting is, it’s open to the public. It’s transparent. And you can hear how we discuss what should or shouldn’t be in this vaccine. And I think, more importantly, we often do sort of a postmortem for the previous year. Did we get it right the previous year? If we didn’t get it exactly right, why didn’t we, and how can that inform this year’s selections?And I think that sort of open, transparent process is critical, I think, for the public to know what we’re doing and how we do it.Geoff Bennett:This was not the first meeting of its kind to be canceled. What do you think is happening here?Dr. Paul Offit:I’m worried.You have the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which advises the CDC, which also had a meeting canceled. And you worry that if you look at Project 2025 and the way they comment on the CDC is that they think the CDC should no longer be a recommending body about vaccines, to sort of eliminate expertise. Just let the doctors and patients figure it out on their own. They don’t need an expertise.And I just fear that we are slowly sort of tearing apart the public health process that has basically served us well. I mean, we live 30 years longer than we did 100 years ago, primarily because of vaccines. And I just think vaccines have become, I think, following this pandemic, to some, a dirty word.Geoff Bennett:I mean, all of this confusion, we learned that the FDA and CDC are participating in an international meeting this week about flu plans for next year with the World Health Organization. And that’s after President Trump took the U.S. out of the WHO. So what does that suggest to you?Dr. Paul Offit:Well, you would think, if nothing else, the COVID pandemic would have taught us that it’s an international community in terms of the way viruses move and affect people.What happened in China, in Wuhan, China in 2019 clearly affected this world, as more than nine million people died of COVID. And so we can withdraw from the WHO. We can say America first and just hope that we can close our borders to viruses that are continuing to mutate and cause harm. But it doesn’t work that way.It’s an international community. And I think our withdrawal from the WHO or our withdrawal from USAID was a mistake.Geoff Bennett:This week, Texas reported the first death of a child in the U.S. for measles. It’s the first U.S. measles death in some 15 years. How worried are you about the potential of a major outbreak here?Dr. Paul Offit:Very worried. We have had clearly a decline in immunization, right.So, if you look at that Mennonite community, about 80 percent of those children were vaccinated. That’s not enough. It has to be in the mid-95 percent range to protect against this disease, measles, which is the most contagious infectious disease, more contagious than any other infectious disease.And so it will find those people who are unvaccinated and cause an infection. I think this was a line that was crossed. This is the first measles death in a child in almost 20 years. That’s a tragedy because, one, any death in the child is a tragedy.This was a preventable death. We basically eliminated measles from this country by the year 2000. It’s come back largely because people have chosen not to vaccinate their children, in part because they’re scared of the vaccine, scared that it has safety issues like autism, something that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been promoting loudly and to many people for the last 20 years.And I think this is the result of that.Geoff Bennett:When it comes to measles in particular, are you confident that the surveillance that’s in place right now is effective and prepared to meet the moment?Dr. Paul Offit:The way this issue — right. Sure.The way this usually works is that state or local health departments take on those local outbreaks. And when they feel that it’s gotten out of hand or they need more resources, then they turn to the federal government. So I do worry that, with the federal government in some ways pulling back, I feel, in some ways in public health, that these outbreaks will continue.We’re now at nine states that have outbreaks. We have gone from 58 cases in 2023 of measles to 285 cases in 2024. And I am sure that number is going to be exceeded this year. Get to a couple thousand cases, and children will then die every year of this virus. And it’s just unconscionable.And what you want to hear from the White House, what you want to hear from RFK Jr. right now is, get vaccinated. And you don’t hear that at all. Rather, what you hear is just this kind of glib statement from RFK Jr., well, every year we have measles outbreaks.Well, we didn’t use to. By 2000, we had eliminated measles from this country. It’s come back because we have eroded faith in vaccines, largely because of efforts by people like Robert F. Kennedy Jr.Geoff Bennett:Sobering insights.Dr. Paul Offit, our thanks to you, as always.Dr. Paul Offit:Thank you.Watch the Full EpisodeFeb 14By Associated PressFeb 13By Amanda Seitz, Associated PressFeb 11By Sean Murphy, Devi Shastri, Associated Press

Geoff Bennett

Geoff Bennett

Geoff Bennett serves as co-anchor of PBS News Hour. He also serves as an NBC News and MSNBC political contributor.

Karina Cuevas

Karina Cuevas

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