CDC Vaccine Advisory Panel To Revisit COVID Shot Safety Next Month

February 26, 2026
HealthDay Staff HealthDay Reporter

COVID vaccines are back under review and the move is raising concern among some health experts.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices is slated to discuss COVID vaccine injuries at a March meeting and may vote on future vaccine recommendations, according to a notice posted Wednesday in the Federal Register.

The panel was appointed by U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime vaccine critic who fired all the previous members last year.

Several of the new appointees have questioned vaccine safety, despite many studies showing COVID vaccines are safe and effective.

"Some committee members have made repeated claims about COVID vaccine harms that were either unsupported by verifiable data or reflected clear mischaracterizations of the existing scientific literature," said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.

“If the committee intends to revisit vaccine safety questions, it has an obligation to do so transparently and rigorously,” he told NBC News. “Given past misstatements, members do not deserve the benefit of the doubt.”

Under Kennedy’s leadership, health officials have moved to limit access to COVID vaccines and taken a tougher stance on mRNA vaccines, the technology used in the Pfizer and Moderna shots.

Kennedy has previously called the COVID vaccine “the deadliest vaccine ever made.”

In October, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention changed its guidance, recommending COVID vaccines only for adults 65 and older after consulting a doctor or pharmacist. Before that, the shots were recommended for everyone age 6 months and older.

Dr. Vinay Prasad, vaccine chief at the the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), said in an internal memo in November that an agency review found at least 10 children died "after and because of receiving" the COVID vaccine. The FDA has not released the data publicly or published it in a peer-reviewed journal.

Earlier this month, the FDA briefly rejected, then later reversed, a decision to review Moderna’s mRNA-based flu vaccine.

Dorit Reiss, a vaccine policy expert at the University of California Law San Francisco, told NBC News vaccine injuries are not a direct part of the advisory committee’s mandate.

“When they make vaccine recommendations, they should consider vaccines risks, and new risks may lead to changed recommendations; but that’s not directly about vaccine injuries,” he said in an email.

The advisory committee has discussed safety issues before. In 2021, it reviewed rare cases of myocarditis (inflammation of the heart) seen mostly in teen boys and young men after mRNA COVID shots.

That review led to discussions about spacing out vaccine doses.

Reiss said the panel could further narrow who should get COVID vaccines or push for label changes that highlight risks, although vaccine labeling is usually handled by the FDA, NBC News reported.

Earlier this week, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists said it would no longer serve as a committee liaison.

The group cited concerns about “recent changes that undermine the committee’s scientific integrity and evidence-based approach to vaccine policy.”

At next month’s meeting, the advisory committee is also expected to discuss long COVID and its own recommendation process, according to the federal notice.

More information

The American Academy of Pediatrics has an updated childhood vaccine schedule.

SOURCE: NBC News, Feb. 25, 2026