US CDC will not publish report showing COVID vaccine effectiveness

By Christy Santhosh

April 22 (Reuters) – A report showing the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines has been blocked from being published in the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and ​Prevention’s flagship scientific journal, a spokesperson from the Department ‌of Health and Human Services said on Wednesday.

“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 Wednesday, said earlier this month that the ⁠CDC had delayed publication of the ⁠report that showed the vaccines reduced emergency department ​visits and hospitalizations 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 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 ‌vaccine research after Pfizer and BioNTech said ⁠in April they had halted a large U.S. ​trial ‌of their updated COVID shot in healthy adults ​aged 50 ⁠to 64 because low enrollment prevented the study from generating the data sought by regulators.

COVID vaccines remain significant products for their makers, though demand has fallen sharply from pandemic peaks.

(Reporting by Rhea Rose Abraham and Christy Santhosh in Bengaluru; Editing by Andrew Heavens ​and Shinjini Ganguli)