A former Harvard Medical School professor who claims he was fired for refusing to receive the Covid-19 vaccine was appointed on Wednesday to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s advisory panel for immunization policy.

Public health and infectious disease experts said they were surprised and confused about the move, and questioned why the HHS did not offer any reasoning for its decision.

There was a notable absence last week when U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced in a 58-second video that the government would no longer endorse the COVID-19 vaccine for healthy children or pregnant women.

An official at the CDC who oversaw the agency's recommendations for COVID-19 vaccines has resigned, following a week of mixed messaging from federal health officials.

The CDC says Taiwan's COVID-19 outbreak may have peaked and could wind down by late July as the number of medical visits starts to slow.

The resignation follows an order by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to change the agency's guidance.

A medical officer at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who was working on the committee that was weighing changes to the agency’s Covid-19 vaccine recommendations resigned on Friday, the same day officials the US Department of Health and Human Services announced they had removed the CDC recommendation for pregnant women and healthy children to get Covid-19 vaccines.

Since the first Covid-19 vaccines were authorized in December 2020, more than 672 million doses have been administered in the United States. For years, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has broadly recommended up-to-date vaccination,