Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s vaccine advisory panel will debate and possibly delay a key immunization that protects babies from the hepatitis B virus.
The influential Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices will meet Dec. 4 and 5 to debate changes to the immunization schedule, which calls for routine vaccines at set intervals for newborns and young children. The vaccines protect children against diseases such as polio, measles and whooping cough.
On the panel's agenda for Thursday: Discussing the hepatitis B vaccine, collecting public comments and voting.
Public health experts warn any delay to the first dose of the hepatitis B vaccine, given to newborns within 24 hours of birth, could threaten decades of progress.
Since the current three-dose regimen was adopted in 1991, hepatitis B infections among children and teens have dropped 99%, preventing thousands of chronic hepatitis cases that can lead to cirrhosis and liver cancer, according to a 2023 study in the official journal of the U.S. Surgeon General.
