March 11 (Reuters) - A key U.S. federal vaccine advisory panel has dropped a push against COVID mRNA vaccines, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday, citing two people familiar with the matter.
Some vaccine advisers under Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr had been seeking to potentially stop recommending mRNA shots, but that plan is no longer moving forward, the report said.
The Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, did not immediately respond to a Reuters' request for comment outside regular working hours.
The advisers to the CDC are slated to meet next week and are expected to make recommendations on which vaccines Americans should receive and when.
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Under the leadership of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime anti-vaccine activist, the HHS decided in August last year to wind down mRNA vaccine development activities under its biomedical research unit.
He had said "the data show these vaccines fail to protect effectively against upper respiratory infections like COVID and flu," despite scientific evidence to the contrary.
These vaccines, produced by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, do not contain weakened or inactivated viruses, and instead give cells instructions to make a protein component of the virus, prompting the body to build immunity.
(Reporting by Akanksha Khushi in Bengaluru; Editing by Andrew Heavens and Andrei Khalip)