The Division of Well being and Human Providers will cancel contracts and pull funding for some vaccines which can be being developed to battle respiratory viruses like COVID-19 and the flu.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the well being secretary and a longtime vaccine critic, introduced in a press release Tuesday that $500 million value of vaccine improvement initiatives, all utilizing mRNA know-how, will probably be halted.
The initiatives — 22 of them — are being led by a number of the nation’s main pharmaceutical firms like Pfizer and Moderna to forestall flu, COVID-19 and H5N1 infections.
The mRNA vaccines are credited with slowing the 2020 coronavirus pandemic.
Kennedy mentioned within the Tuesday assertion that he needs the well being division to maneuver away from mRNA vaccines, calling on the division to start out “investing in better solutions.” He supplied no particulars on what these applied sciences could be.