By Julie Steenhuysen, Michael Erman and Dan Levine
(Reuters) -Pediatric infectious disease expert Dr. Lakshmi Panagiotakopoulos of the U.S. CDC resigned on Tuesday as co-leader of a working group that advises outside experts on COVID-19 vaccines and is leaving the agency, two sources familiar with the move told Reuters.
Panagiotakopoulos said in an email to work group colleagues that her decision to step down was based on the belief she is “no longer able to help the most vulnerable members” of the U.S. population.
In her role at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s working group of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, she co-led the gathering of information on topics for presentation.
Her resignation comes one week after Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a long-time vaccine skeptic who oversees the CDC, the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health, said the COVID vaccine for healthy children and healthy pregnant women had been removed from the CDC’s recommended immunization schedule.
The move was a departure from the process in which ACIP experts meet and vote on changes to the immunization schedule or recommendations on who should get vaccines before the agency’s director made a final call. The committee had not voted on the changes announced by Kennedy and the CDC does not yet have a permanent director.
Two days after Kennedy’s announcement, the CDC published a vaccine schedule online saying that COVID-19 vaccines remain an option for healthy children aged 6 months to 17 years when parents and doctors agree that it is needed.
It had previously recommended updated COVID vaccines foreveryone aged six months and older, following the guidance ofthe panel of outside experts.
Two sources said Panagiotakopoulos did not include a specific reason for her departure. Panagiotakopoulos did not return requests for comment.
“Unfortunately for me, this is a personal decision,” Panagiotakopoulos wrote in an email to members of the working group that was read to Reuters by a source who received it.
“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.”
The committee is scheduled to meet on June 25-27 and is expected to deliberate and vote on recommendations for use of COVID-19 vaccines, according to one of the sources who was not authorized to speak publicly.
(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago, Michael Erman in New York and Dan Levine in San Francisco; Editing by Caroline Humer and Bill Berkrot)
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