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Acting Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Jay Bhattacharya, who also leads the National Institutes of Health (NIH), is reportedly delaying the publication of new findings within the health agency showcasing the strong effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines to prevent emergency room visits and hospitalizations.
According to a report from The Washington Post, which cites two scientists with knowledge of Bhattacharya’s actions, the unpublished report examined adults who had been vaccinated between the months of September and December last year, and compared their health results to adults who didn’t get vaccinated. Among those who received vaccinations, ER and urgent care visits dropped by 50 percent, while hospitalizations overall saw a 55 percent decline.
The report has cleared the CDC’s scientific-review process, but Bhattacharya is blocking its publication over supposed concerns over its methodology, the scientists said, demanding further scrutiny. However, the report used methods that are regularly utilized by the national health agency, and a report on flu vaccines, using the same methodology as this blocked report, was published just last week.
The revelation of the delay of the report and the questionable rationale for delaying its release is raising concerns among members of the scientific community that the agency is shaping its policy due to the anti-vaccine attitudes of Bhattacharya and Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Bhattacharya was picked by President Donald Trump to lead NIH last fall, a move that many public health advocates described as deeply alarming. Walker Bragman, a public health journalist, went so far as to describe Bhattacharya as Trump’s “most extreme pick” for his administration overall. He was named as acting CDC director in February due to a vacancy in that position.
During the pandemic, Bhattacharya expressed skepticism of stay-at-home orders, worrying about the psychological effects that they would bring. Instead, before vaccines became available, he promoted so-called “natural” herd immunity, which calls for people to go about their lives as usual, with the hopes that their purposely getting infected leads to them developing their own immunity to the virus.
Such a method, if it had been carried out, would have inevitably led to more cases, hospitalizations, and ultimately deaths during the COVID crisis.
Reacting to The Washington Post report, several critics expressed concern that Bhattacharya and Kennedy were allowing their noted anti-vaccine beliefs to dictate policy rather than evidence-based studies.
“MORE evidence COVID vaccines hugely beneficial. MORE lies & spin by RFK Jr et al.,” said Timothy Caulfield, health law professor at the University of Alberta, writing on Bluesky.
“This is a clear example of putting politics over science at the cost of lives,” said science communicator and public health advocate Lucky Tran.
“This is definitely an escalation of this administration’s undermining of CDC science,” said Fiona Havers, a former adviser on vaccines at the CDC. “The fact that they are now blocking this is extremely concerning.”
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