The 17 members of a federal vaccine advisory committee, who were ousted last week, argued their abrupt dismissal has "left the U.S. vaccine program critically weakened." The group, speaking collectively for the first time since Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s decision to overhaul a key committee on vaccine policy has left the country’s vaccine infrastructure “critically weakened,” former members of the group said in a piece published in JAMA on Monday.

Fiona Havers, who oversees CDC respiratory virus data, told colleagues she no longer had confidence the data would be used objectively to set vaccine policy.