The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) official who led the agency’s network to collect data on COVID-19 and RSV hospitalizations resigned Monday.

Dr. Fiona Havers told colleagues in an email that she no longer had confidence the data would be used to make “evidence-based vaccine policy decisions.”

CDC Scientist Who Drove COVID, RSV Vaccine Policies Resigns in Protest

👉 In an email to colleagues announcing her resignation, Dr. Fiona Havers said she was no longer confident that COVID-19 and RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus, vaccine data would be used “objectively or… pic.twitter.com/kZsf6NKGZ9

— Children’s Health Defense (@ChildrensHD) June 18, 2025

Per CBS News:

An infectious disease researcher who has worked with Havers, and received her email voicing concerns with how the data would be used, described the resignation as the latest in the “dismantling” of the agency’s expertise.

“It’s a big loss to the CDC,” the researcher, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told CBS News.

CBS News sent a request for comment to the CDC about the concerns that Havers expressed, but did not hear back from the agency’s spokesperson. Instead, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services responded.

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“Under Secretary Kennedy’s leadership, HHS is committed to following the gold standard of scientific integrity. Vaccine policy decisions will be based on objective data, transparent analysis, and evidence – not conflicts of interest or industry influence,” Emily Hilliard, the department spokesperson, said in an email.

Havers had led the CDC’s Respiratory Virus Hospitalization Surveillance Network, or RESP-NET, that collects and studies trends in hospitalizations from COVID-19, RSV and influenza. Her presentations of RESP-NET’s findings have figured prominently into past meetings of the agency’s Advisory Committee of Immunization Practices as they weighed updates to the CDC’s vaccine recommendations.

Dr. Fiona Havers, head of RESP-NET hospitalization data, resigned from @CDCgov today

"I no longer have confidence that these data will be used objectively or evaluated with appropriate scientific rigor to make evidence-based vaccine policy decisions."https://t.co/hSi7GKEAB2

— Alexander Tin (@Alexander_Tin) June 16, 2025

The Defender reports:

Drug safety advocate Kim Witczak said Havers’ concerns over how the current administration will use data on respiratory illnesses belied the lack of scientific debate plaguing public health agencies.

“Where was that concern during the height of the COVID vaccine era?” asked Witczak, a member of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Psychopharmacologic Drugs Advisory Committee. “For someone who was central to driving policy through her data presentations to now raise alarm about lack of rigor — well, it says a lot about how the system only values critique when it suits internal narratives.”

Havers led efforts by the CDC to study respiratory illness hospitalization trends. According to CBS News, Havers’ findings “figured prominently” at prior meetings of the CDC’s Advisory Committee of Immunization Practices (ACIP).

ACIP develops vaccine-related recommendations, which are then passed on to the director of the CDC for approval.

Havers’ resignation came just a week after Kennedy removed all of ACIP’s members, and days after Kennedy tapped eight new ACIP members, some of whom the mainstream media subsequently accused of being “anti-vaccine activists.” Kennedy said the changes were needed “to re-establish public confidence in vaccine science.”

Read the new ACIP members below:

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Appoints Robert Malone, Others To Vaccine Advisory Panel