By Michael Erman

NEW YORK, Dec 2 (Reuters) – Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s hand-picked vaccine advisory committee will vote later this week on whether to delay hepatitis B shots for most American children but has not settled on exactly how long to recommend pushing them back, the new chair of the committee said in an interview.

Delaying the decades-old practice of administering the hepatitis B vaccine to newborns is an idea that has been pushed by long-time anti-vaccine activist Kennedy as part of his campaign to revamp U.S. vaccination policy.

“We try to avoid giving things to the most vulnerable,” Kirk Milhoan said late on Monday. “We want to test these things incredibly thoroughly before we give it to them, especially in a neonatal period or in a pregnant mother. So these are things that we have a very high suspicion of.”

A review of more than 400 studies and reports by independent vaccine experts released on Tuesday found that the U.S. policy of giving the hepatitis B vaccine to newborns cut infections in children by more than 95%.

The vaccine advisory committee to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has not spoken directly to vaccine makers about potential supply concerns they have raised that could result from delaying the shots, Milhoan said.

“We’re not really dealing with that issue right now,” he said. “We haven’t had those discussions, and that might not be really appropriate for the (committee) to have those discussions outside of the meeting.”

Even small changes to the vaccination schedule could disrupt the supply of hepatitis B vaccine or others given in combination with that inoculation, such as the polio vaccine, for a year or longer, several vaccine makers and experts told Reuters.

The committee is scheduled to meet on Thursday and Friday.

(Reporting by Michael Erman; editing by Caroline Humer and Bill Berkrot)

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