US CDC will not publish report showing Covid-19 vaccine effectiveness
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Signs advertising flu and Covid-19 vaccines at a CVS pharmacy in New York City in October 2025.
PHOTO: REUTERS
- A CDC report showing Covid-19 vaccines reduced hospitalisations by half was blocked from publication due to methodological concerns, an HHS spokesperson stated on April 22.
- This blocking follows challenges, including Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s panel scrapping broad vaccine recommendations, later blocked by a federal judge.
- Pfizer and BioNTech halted a US trial of their updated Covid-19 shot due to low enrolment and sharply fallen vaccine demand.
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NEW YORK - A report showing the efficacy of Covid-19 vaccines has been blocked from being published in the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention’s flagship scientific journal, a spokesperson from the Department of Health and Human Services said on April 22.
“Scientific reports are routinely reviewed at multiple levels to ensure they meet the highest standards before publication,” said HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon.
He added that there were concerns about the “methodological approach estimating vaccine effectiveness” and so “the manuscript was not accepted for publication,” in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR).
MMWR is one of the agency’s main vehicles for publishing public-health findings and guidance, and its reports are closely watched by doctors, researchers and state health officials.
The Washington Post, which first reported the news on March 22, said earlier this month that the CDC had delayed publication of the report that showed the vaccines reduced emergency department visits and hospitalisations among healthy adults by about half this past winter.
Under Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s leadership, an anti-vaccine activist, a panel of vaccine advisers in September scrapped a broad recommendation for Covid-19 shots and said the shots should be administered only through shared decision-making with a healthcare provider.
That recommendation has since been temporarily blocked by a federal judge, while the case moves forward.
The publication dispute comes on the heels of mounting challenges for Covid-19 vaccine research after Pfizer and BioNTech said in April they had halted a large US trial of their updated Covid-19 shot in healthy adults aged 50 to 64 because low enrollment prevented the study from generating the data sought by regulators.
Covid-19 vaccines remain significant products for their makers, though demand has fallen sharply from pandemic peaks. REUTERS
