US health officials nix publication of a study on COVID vaccine
effectiveness
[April 23, 2026]
By MIKE STOBBE
NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. health officials stopped the publication of a study
on whether the COVID-19 vaccine was keeping adults from becoming sick
enough to have to go to the hospital.
A U.S. Department of Health and Human Services spokesman on Wednesday
confirmed the decision to halt publication, citing a dispute about the
study's methodology.
The research paper was to appear in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly
Report, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's flagship
publication.
One way scientists have studied COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness is by
focusing on sick people who were admitted to hospitals or visited
emergency rooms. The researchers check whether patients were vaccinated
and then calculate the odds of a positive COVID-19 test among vaccinated
patients vs. those who were unvaccinated.
Papers using that methodology have been published — after review by
experts in the field — in a number of esteemed journals, including
Pediatrics and the New England Journal of Medicine.
Following the same approach, the new study concluded that the vaccine
cut ER visits and hospitalizations among otherwise healthy adults by
about half this past winter, according to The Washington Post, which
first reported the cancellation.
HHS officials did not say exactly why that methodology was a problem in
this instance but argued that prior infection, behavior and differences
in who seeks care can affect results.
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 The wider scientific community does
not have those concerns and many researchers have used the approach,
said Dr. Fiona Havers, an Atlanta-based doctor who previously worked
at CDC. The methodology is built to address differences related to
who seeks care, and prior infection shouldn't be much of an issue
because so many Americans have been infected by the coronavirus, she
added.
No study design is perfect, but HHS officials
haven’t proposed an alternative "that’s realistic and ethical for
getting real-time estimates of how well vaccines are working each
year,” said Havers, who once led a CDC hospital network surveillance
team that focused on COVID-19 and other respiratory viruses.
During President Donald Trump’s first administration, public health
advocates worried that political appointees were trying to control
what was being published in the MMWR.
Those concerns returned last year, when Trump returned to office and
publication of the MMWR was temporarily suspended. It returned, but
has remained a thinner version of its former self.
“Health care professionals rely on the MMWR for timely, objective
and fact-based information about the nation’s public health," said
U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat who voiced concern when
CDC communications were halted last year.
"Muzzling scientists and doctors on how to prevent Americans from
being hospitalized can have deadly consequences. The CDC must
abandon plans to place a political gag order on this critical
research,” Durbin said in a statement Wednesday.
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