The administration is canceling proposals from Pfizer and Sanofi Pasteur within the BARDA rapid response partnership due to ineffectiveness against upper respiratory infections like COVID and flu. Funding is being shifted toward safer, broader vaccine platforms that maintain effectiveness amidst viral mutations. While final-stage contracts for some vaccines will continue, no new mRNA projects will commence. Infectious disease specialists have criticized this approach, saying it sets unrealistic expectations for vaccine performance against respiratory viruses, which do not achieve complete sterilizing immunity.
The administration said is also rejecting or canceling proposals from Pfizer and Sanofi Pasteur that were part of a BARDA rapid response partnership.
Kennedy said data showed the vaccines in question 'fail to protect effectively against upper respiratory infections like COVID and flu.'
'No vaccine for respiratory viruses - COVID, flu, RSV - provides durable sterilizing immunity. That was never the standard and shouldn't be the expectation,' Stanford associate professor Jake Scott wrote on X.
Kennedy has repeatedly pushed the debunked idea that vaccines cause autism and in the past was involved in litigation over patient injury claims.
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