An influential vaccine committee will revisit recommendations around the hepatitis B shot on Thursday and may change the current practice of vaccinating newborns, an intervention that for decades has contributed to falling rates of the disease.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has repeatedly questioned whether babies should continue to receive the vaccine on their first day of life.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine advisory committee has recommended the hepatitis B vaccine for all infants since 1991. (The panel later recommended catch-up vaccinations for children who were not immunized as babies; it first recommended the vaccine in 1982 for people who were at high risk.) The goal was to guard against an infection that can leave lasting liver damage.
Mr. Kennedy purged the committee in June, appointing new members, including people who have been skeptical of certain vaccines.
While most adults who contract hepatitis B will recover, young children who contract the disease are at far greater risk of becoming chronically ill. Babies receive three doses of the vaccine; the initial shot is given on the first day of life.
Rates of hepatitis B fell sharply in the decades after the C.D.C.’s recommendation: Acute infections reported among children and teens dropped by 99 percent between 1990 and 2019. And while overall childhood vaccination rates have declined for years, rates of infant immunization against hepatitis B in particular do not appear to be falling.
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The post The Hepatitis B Vaccine Was a Public Health Win. Now It’s Under Threat. appeared first on New York Times.
