The Food and Drug Administration will upend its approach to immunizations for respiratory illnesses, including flu vaccines, according to an email to staff from the agency’s vaccine division director, Dr. Vinay Prasad.
Prasad said in the email, which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, that the pivot comes after the FDA found 10 children had died because of the Covid-19 vaccine, though he didn’t outline evidence or details of the deaths.
The proposed revisions are likely to reshape how vaccines are developed and raise concerns in the medical community about what data will be used to back those changes.
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Dr. Paul Offit, an infectious disease physician at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and other public health experts criticized Prasad’s assertions. His claims should have been published in a peer-reviewed medical journal so that scientists could verify them, Offit said. “You don’t know what data he has. What does this do? All it does is scare people,” Offit said. “It’s just dangerous and irresponsible.”
