RFK Jr deputy named CDC acting director as confusion surrounds COVID vaccine availability
Impacts from chaos at the CDC and more limited FDA COVID vaccine clearances are stirring concern and confusion.
Following upheaval at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) this week that came with the ouster of its director, Jim O’Neill, who has been serving as Health and Human Services (HHS) deputy director since June, will be named as the CDC’s acting director.
Media outlets, including the Washington Post, reported the development yesterday, and Stat confirmed the move in an email from a White House official.
According to an earlier HHS announcement when O’Neill was sworn in at the department, he had been tasked at HHS with helping Kennedy oversee agencies including the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the CDC. O’Neill had previously worked at HHS from 2002 to 2008 in the George W. Bush administration.
O’Neill is an investor who has degrees from Yale University and the University of Chicago, including a master’s in humanities.
More details behind CDC shake-up
In other developments, more details are emerging in the wake of resignations of top CDC scientists. Dan Jernigan, MD, MPH, who resigned from his post as head of the CDC’s National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, told the Washington Post that he decided to resign after he was forced to work with David Geier, a proponent of the long-discredited claim that vaccines cause autism who was disciplined in Maryland more than a decade ago for practicing medicine without a license.
HHS secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had hired Geier to do a new study on the link, with results expected in September. It’s unclear if the report will be part of proceedings at the next CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). However, at a lengthy cabinet meeting this week, President Trump alluded to the study and said that something artificial like “a drug or something” could be the cause of autism. He said he looked forward to appearing at a press conference with Kennedy to release the findings.
Yesterday, Sen Bill Cassidy, MD (R-LA), who heads the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, called for the September ACIP meeting to be postponed to conduct oversight in light of allegations about the agenda, membership, and lack of scientific process that could pose a danger to children’s health.
Narrowed FDA approval complicates COVID vaccination at CVS
A few days ago, the FDA announced that it has cleared the updated COVID vaccines while making it more difficult for some people to get them, including adults at lower risk and young children.
Yesterday, the New York Times reported that CVS, the nation’s largest pharmacy chain, was holding off on offering the COVID vaccines in 16 states that appear to require vaccines administered by pharmacists to be approved by the CDC’s ACIP.
In an update today on Bluesky, the Times reported that CVS has said it can offer the vaccine in 13 of the 16 states with a doctor’s prescription, which still adds a barrier to vaccination. The vaccine is still apparently barred in Massachusetts, Nevada, and New Mexico.
