The acting head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention delayed the publication of a research report showing that the Covid vaccine significantly reduced the likelihood of hospitalizations and emergency visits last winter.
When Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, the agency’s acting director at the time, reviewed the report last month, he objected to the methodology used in the study, saying it yielded an inaccurate picture of the vaccine’s effectiveness, according to an administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters.
Dr. Bhattacharya delayed the report, inviting controversy even as the White House has indicated that it wants to tamp down discussions of vaccines before the midterms. In other meetings with C.D.C. staff, he has praised vaccines, and the one for measles in particular, offering to publicly endorse immunizations.
Dr. Bhattacharya did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Covid vaccine report was scheduled to be published on March 19 in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, the C.D.C.’s flagship journal. Dr. Bhattacharya’s delaying the study’s release was first reported by The Washington Post.
Dr. Bhattacharya, who is the director of the National Institutes of Health, had also been serving as the C.D.C.’s acting director, but his appointment ended last month, when the Trump administration failed to name a new candidate for permanent director of the agency before the acting directorship expired.
The administration has granted him broad powers to oversee the C.D.C.’s activities.
Dr. Debra Houry, who served as the C.D.C.’s chief medical officer before she resigned in August, said, “A political appointee at C.D.C. would be very rarely involved in a review or decision regarding M.M.W.R.,” referring to the journal.
“Previously this would have been reviewed by a career scientist who worked across administrations,” like the chief medical officer, Dr. Houry said. Given staffing shortages at the agency, continuing health threats like measles and Dr. Bhattacharya’s duties as director of another agency, “this would be even more unusual to do,” she added.
But Andrew Nixon, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, said in an emailed statement, “It’s routine for C.D.C. leadership to review and flag concerns about M.M.W.R. papers, especially relating to their methodology, leading up to planned publication.”
“Dr. Bhattacharya expressed concerns about the observational method used in this study to calculate vaccine effectiveness, and the scientific team is working to address these concerns,” Mr. Nixon added. “Dr. Bhattacharya wants to make sure that the paper uses the most appropriate methodology for such a study.”
The study calculated the Covid shot’s effectiveness by looking at the vaccination status of people who had sought care at hospitals and emergency rooms. It found that vaccination cut the likelihood of emergency visits because of Covid by 50 percent and of hospitalizations by 55 percent, according to a summary of the study viewed by The New York Times. This type of study is routinely used to assess vaccine effectiveness, and was also used in a study of the flu vaccine published last month.
Dr. Bhattacharya had not assumed his acting director role in time to vet the flu paper but would have raised the concern over that study’s methodology if he had, according to a Health Department official speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal agency matters.
Dr. Bhattacharya insisted that the Covid vaccine instead be assessed in randomized clinical trials. In such trials, some participants would get the shot and others would receive a placebo, and scientists would then see what proportion of each group got sick.
But such trials tend to be prohibitively expensive and cannot produce answers when the virus is not circulating at high levels, so they tend not to offer results in time to be useful. Last week, Pfizer and BioNTech halted a trial of their updated Covid shot after struggling to enroll enough participants.
Apoorva Mandavilli reports on science and global health for The Times, with a focus on infectious diseases and pandemics and the public health agencies that try to manage them.
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