CDC Suppresses COVID-19 Vaccine Data as US Weighs Vaccine Removal

COVID-19 vaccines have cut emergency visits by 50% and hospitalizations by 55%, according to study results that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suppressed from publication in its flagship journal, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR). At the same time, federal health agencies are reportedly discussing removing COVID-19 vaccines from the US market. Clinicians are speaking out in favor of the vaccines, citing their safety, efficacy, and the millions of lives saved.

Reports indicate that federal government health agencies, led by the HHS Secretary and the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), are seriously discussing the possibility of removing COVID-19 vaccines from the US market. The discussions are part of a revised ACIP charter that has moved focus away from prevention and the value of vaccines. Although COVID-19 is perceived as less severe than it once was, the World Health Organization reports 1,573 individuals in the US died of COVID in the last 28 days through January 25, 2026, and the CDC estimates that COVID disease killed between 45,000 and 64,000 people in the US last year.

The medical director of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases (NFID) warned that removing the vaccines would allow the virus to run unfettered through the US population. “Removal of COVID vaccines from the US market would mean that our government has decided to let the COVID virus, in my terms, win,” he said. He anticipated increases in hospitalizations and deaths among older adults, young children under 2 years of age, pregnant women, immunocompromised patients, those with chronic health conditions, and otherwise healthy young people. Allowing the virus to circulate unfettered means more virus replication, more viral evolution, and an unknown future for COVID, he added.

A recent JAMA study of the 2024-2025 COVID-19 vaccines found an estimated efficacy of 40% against hospitalization and 79% against invasive mechanical ventilation or death among over 8,000 adults. The estimated vaccine effectiveness was similar for KP.311 and XEC lineages, as well as for spike protein mutations potentially associated with immune evasion.

The NFID medical director said the science on vaccine benefits has not changed. “The science continues to show that these vaccines reduce the risk for disease, disability, death,” he said, emphasizing the need to follow the science and publish new results. He noted that the available COVID-19 vaccines have saved millions of lives in the United States and around the world. “It continues to amaze me how we have spent so much time and effort in a lot of areas on minimizing the value of these vaccines and focusing on trying to prove that they hurt people when they have been a tremendous lifesaver here and around the world,” he said. While the vaccines cause reactogenicity such as fever, arm pain, and swollen lymph nodes, there are no common serious adverse events, he stated. He called the suppression of vaccine data a departure from previous federal agency leadership practices and said such studies provide evidence to help clinicians, public health departments, industry, and other stakeholders respond to the latest data.

He painted a bleak picture of current vaccine policies, citing reductions in funding for science and failure to support data feeds that monitor the health of Americans and detect outbreaks. “Life expectancy in the US has increased dramatically since the end of World War II based on a number of health advances, much of that, attributable to vaccines,” he said. “It makes very little sense to me to think we’ll be better off backtracking, removing tools which have led to these improvements.”