Overview

• The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices tabled a Sept. 19 vote and will revisit the issue at its Oct. 22–23 meeting.
• Draft language under discussion would keep a birth dose for infants of mothers who test positive for hepatitis B and start other infants at one month, with parents allowed to choose earlier vaccination.
• President Donald Trump told parents to wait until age 12 for the shot, a stance specialists say ignores mother‑to‑child transmission at birth and early household exposures.
• Since universal birth‑dose vaccination began in 1991, new infections in U.S. children and adolescents have fallen by more than 95%, and up to 90% of infected newborns develop chronic disease without early protection.
• Decades of data show the vaccine is highly effective with serious adverse events exceedingly rare, and the panel’s recent reconstitution by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has prompted concerns about how the evidence is being weighed.