US Health Department official signals progress on selecting new CDC head

By Michael Erman and Leah Douglas

March 19 (Reuters) - A top U.S. health official said on Thursday he was encouraged by interviews to select the next leader of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, signaling progress toward stabilizing the agency after wrangling over vaccination policy threw it into turmoil.

The Health and Human Services Department's chief counselor, Chris ​Klomp, said he was optimistic about prospects for a new head of the CDC, after a shakeup last month that included removing Health and Human Services Deputy Secretary Jim O'Neill from the post of acting CDC director.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s overhaul of vaccine policies has upset the government's public health apparatus, which has the CDC at its core, while his shakeup of the CDC's vaccines advisory committee has run into legal snags, raising the prospect that the committee may again be disbanded.

"I'm excited about (the) number of people that I've had the privilege to get to meet (and) interview and I'm very optimistic that we will select... an excellent leader for that agency," Klomp said at a health conference ​held by ⁠Stat News.

A federal judge on Monday temporarily blocked key parts of Kennedy's vaccines overhaul, including most of his appointments to the CDC's vaccines advisory committee and changes to childhood vaccine recommendations. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has said it would appeal the decision.

On Thursday, a member of that advisory committee, Dr. Robert Malone, said in a social media post that the group was being disbanded and would be recreated, in order to avoid a lengthy appeals process.

Health and Human Services spokesperson Andrew Nixon, asked about Malone's post, said: "Unless officially announced by us, assertions about what we are doing next is baseless speculation."

Another member of the panel, who asked for anonymity to speak freely about the process, told Reuters they had not heard officially whether the government had decided to appeal the stay.

Richard Hughes IV, lead counsel for the American Academy of Pediatrics which brought the lawsuit against Kennedy's vaccine policies, said changes to the advisory committee must follow the laws cited in its court case.

"Anything short of a qualified committee selected through the proper process will meet our challenge," he said.

The top CDC job has been filled by acting directors since Trump fired then-director Susan Monarez last August, after she objected to Kennedy's proposed vaccine policy changes. She was replaced by O'Neill, who in turn was replaced by U.S. National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya after last month's shakeup.