CDC official overseeing COVID-19 vaccine recommendations resigns

A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention official said Tuesday she was resigning from her role overseeing updates to the agency’s COVID-19 vaccine recommendations, following an order by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to force an update to the agency’s guidance.

“My career in public health and vaccinology started with a deep-seated desire to help the most vulnerable members of our population, and that is not something I am able to continue doing in this role,” Dr. Lakshmi Panagiotakopoulos wrote in an email to some members of the agency’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP).

Panagiotakopoulos had served as one of the leads of the work group on COVID-19 vaccines within the ACIP. She sent an email to members of the work group early Tuesday morning to say she was resigning, multiple people who received the email confirmed to CBS News. 

Reuters first reported news of her resignation. Panagiotakopoulos and a CDC spokesperson did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The process to update the CDC’s influential vaccine recommendations is closely watched by experts because they are tied to federal policies and programs, including liability protections, vaccines for uninsured children and requirements for insurance coverage. 

The committee had been set to vote on updated recommendations for COVID-19 vaccines at a meeting later this month, before Kennedy usurped the process to impose his own changes to the guidance.

Earlier this year, members of the work group had signaled they were already leaning toward narrowing the guidance to soften the recommendation for children with no underlying conditions to get vaccinated, in line with how Kennedy’s order was ultimately implemented.

But Kennedy’s directive also broke with the committee by ordering the agency to exclude pregnant women from its COVID-19 vaccine recommendations. Pregnant women had been one of the groups that experts had worried were at higher risk of severe COVID-19 and warranted continued recommendations to get vaccinated.

“More of us should be resigning in protest,” one federal health official told CBS News, in response to the news of Panagiotakopoulos leaving her role.