Dr. Lakshmi Panagiotakopoulos, a pediatric infectious disease expert and top CDC official, resigned on Tuesday as co-leader of the agency’s group that oversees updates to COVID-19 jab recommendations.

Reuters first reported her resignation.

This is the start to a great Birthday!!🎂

CDC official overseeing COVID-19 vaccine recommendations resigns – CBS News https://t.co/bNn66H01Cg

— Brian Tyson, MD 🇺🇸 (@btysonmd) June 4, 2025

Per Reuters:

Panagiotakopoulos said in an email to work group colleagues that her decision to step down was based on the belief she is “no longer able to help the most vulnerable members” of the U.S. population.

In her role at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s working group of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, she co-led the gathering of information on topics for presentation.

Her resignation comes one week after Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a long-time vaccine skeptic, said the COVID vaccine for healthy children and healthy pregnant women had been removed from the CDC’s recommended immunization schedule. Kennedy oversees the CDC, the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health as leader of the Department of Health and Human Services.

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The move was a departure from the usual process in which ACIP experts meet and vote on changes to the immunization schedule or recommendations on who should get vaccines before the agency’s director made a final call. The committee had not voted on the changes announced by Kennedy and the CDC does not yet have a permanent director.

Some questioned if Panagiotakopoulos will take a job in the pharmaceutical industry after her resignation.

Taking a job in a pharma company? https://t.co/XzzS5GtNu3

— Jeffrey A Tucker (@jeffreyatucker) June 4, 2025

“Thank you @SecKennedy & @DrMakaryFDA for ensuring those w/ conflicts of interest, be they ideological, financial or otherwise, will not influence decision making,” Health Freedom Defense Fund President Leslie Manookian commented.

Thank you @SecKennedy & @DrMakaryFDA for ensuring those w/ conflicts of interest, be they ideological, financial or otherwise, will not influence decision making. From the article, "More of us should be resigning in protest" – don't let the door hit you…https://t.co/my5G348Ip9

— Leslie Manookian (@LeslieManookian) June 4, 2025

CBS News reports:

The committee had been set to vote on updated recommendations for COVID-19 vaccines at a meeting later this month, before Kennedy usurped the process to impose his own changes to the guidance.

Earlier this year, members of the work group had signaled they were already leaning toward narrowing the guidance to soften the recommendation for children with no underlying conditions to get vaccinated, in line with how Kennedy’s order was ultimately implemented.

But Kennedy’s directive also broke with the committee by ordering the agency to exclude pregnant women from its COVID-19 vaccine recommendations. Pregnant women had been one of the groups that experts had worried were at higher risk of severe COVID-19 and warranted continued recommendations to get vaccinated.

“More of us should be resigning in protest,” one federal health official told CBS News, in response to the news of Panagiotakopoulos leaving her role.