Two U.S. government agencies that are key players in the World Health Organization-led process to select the flu viruses for next winter’s influenza vaccines are participating in a meeting to discuss the issue, despite the Trump administration’s plans to withdraw from the global health agency, sources told STAT.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did not announce its plans to participate in advance but confirmed its role Monday in an email response to STAT.
“CDC will be actively participating virtually at the WHO vaccine consultation meeting for the recommendation of viruses for 2025-26 Northern Hemisphere vaccine this week,” CDC spokesperson Benjamin Haynes said.
The weeklong meeting began Monday, with experts from both the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration in virtual attendance. With the exception of Haynes, all sources who spoke with STAT for this article requested they not be identified by name because they hadn’t been authorized to speak.
To attend the meeting, even virtually, the two agencies would have had to receive an exemption from the Trump administration due to its ban on all interactions with the WHO.
President Trump signed an executive order on his first day in office announcing that the United States will withdraw from the WHO. And since the earliest days of the new administration, government agencies have been ordered to cease all dealings with the Geneva-based global health agency, and to halt the dispersal of all funding to it.
The flu strain selection meeting, though, would have created a quandary for the administration.
Twice a year, experts from around the world gather to determine which strains of flu should be in the next version of flu vaccines. The vaccines take months to make, bottle, and distribute, so these meetings typically take place toward the end of one flu season to prepare for the next.
This week’s meeting, for the 2025-2026 Northern Hemisphere flu vaccines, is being held at the Francis Crick Institute in London. The meeting for the Southern Hemisphere 2026 flu vaccine will be held in September.
In addition to making recommendations on the viruses seasonal flu vaccines should target, the group also reviews what is happening with flu viruses like H5N1 bird flu and other flu viruses that pose a pandemic risk. The goal of these discussions is to determine if existing candidate vaccine viruses — effectively seed strains with which to make vaccines to target these novel viruses — are still effective or should be updated. Some countries, notably the United States, make and stockpile supplies of vaccines to use in the event that some of these flu viruses circulating in birds or animals begin to transmit among humans.
The decisions are made by experts from seven WHO collaborating centers on influenza and four essential regulatory laboratories, located in Australia, China, Japan, Russian, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The CDC is one of the collaborating centers and the FDA one of the essential regulatory labs, giving U.S. government scientists two of the 11 votes — though decisions are made by consensus rather than straight votes.
The CDC stopped contributing influenza data to two WHO-managed databases, FluNet and FluID, on Jan. 24, Maria Van Kerkhove, acting director of the WHO’s department of epidemic and pandemic threat management, said recently. Data from earlier in the flu season had already been shared, but in a process designed to predict what’s going to happen months from now, the viruses that are circulating now are more relevant than reports on what circulated months ago.
The ban on interacting with the WHO left in doubt whether the CDC and FDA scientists would be allowed to attend the strain selection meeting, which in turn raised questions about how the FDA would instruct suppliers of flu vaccines for the U.S. market what it believes next winter’s shots should target.
The FDA typically holds a meeting of its expert panel, the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, in March to go over the discussions that arose at the WHO strain selection meeting and finalize choices for the vaccines to be used in this country. It is currently unclear whether VRBPAC will meet next month. Many meetings of advisory committees have been canceled or postponed without rescheduling, since the new administration took office, including one of the CDC’s advisory committee, which was meant to meet this week. There are no upcoming VRBPAC meetings listed on the FDA’s website.