A top COVID-19 vaccine adviser at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has resigned, saying that she is no longer able to perform her mission to help "the most vulnerable."
Pediatric infectious disease expert Dr. Lakshmi Panagiotakopoulos informed her colleagues on Tuesday in an email that she was leaving the CDC after 12 years.
"Unfortunately for me, this is a personal decision," Panagiotakopoulos wrote in an email that was read to Reuters by a source who received it.
"My career in public health and vaccinology started with a deep-seated desire to help the most vulnerable members of our population, and that is not something I am able to continue doing in this role."
According to The Washington Post, Panagiotakopoulos co-led a coronavirus vaccine work group. The staff and outside experts involved in the group help the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices develop vaccine guidance.
While Panagiotakopoulos did not give any specifics in her email, the timing suggests that her actions were a result of recent changes made by the Trump administration.
Her resignation comes one week after Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime vaccine skeptic who oversees the CDC, the Food and Drug Administration, and the National Institutes of Health, said the COVID-19 vaccine for healthy children and healthy pregnant women had been removed from the CDC's recommended immunization schedule.
Kennedy posted on X: "Bottom line: it's common sense, and it's good science. We are now one step closer to realizing @POTUS's promise to Make America Healthy Again."
The move was a departure from the process in which ACIP experts meet and vote on changes to the immunization schedule or recommendations on who should get vaccines before the agency's director made a final call. The committee had not voted on the changes announced by Kennedy and the CDC does not yet have a permanent director.
Information from Reuters was used in this report.
James Morley III ✉
James Morley III is a writer with more than two decades of experience in entertainment, travel, technology, and science and nature.
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