CDC Adviser Who Promoted COVID Vaccines for Pregnant Women Resigns

You can feel it. The narrative they’ve pushed for years is falling apart. And there's nothing they can do about it.

Jun 06, 2025

This article originally appeared on The Defender and was republished with permission.

Guest post by Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D.

Dr. Lakshmi Panagiotakopoulos, a pediatric infectious disease expert who helped promote the COVID-19 vaccine to pregnant women, resigned today from her position as co-leader of a CDC working group on the COVID-19 vaccine and is leaving the agency, Reuters reported.

Dr. Lakshmi Panagiotakopoulos, a pediatric infectious disease expert who helped promote the COVID-19 vaccine to pregnant women, resigned Tuesday from her position as co-leader of a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) working group on the COVID-19 vaccine and is leaving the agency, Reuters reported.

In an email to colleagues, Panagiotakopoulos said her decision to resign was based on her belief that she is “no longer able to help the most vulnerable members” of the population. According to CBS News, she sent the email Tuesday morning.

Reuters cited anonymous sources who said Panagiotakopoulos did not state a specific reason for her resignation. In her email, she said her departure was “a personal decision.”

“My career in public health and vaccinology started with a deep-seated desire to help the most vulnerable members of our population, and that is not something I am able to continue doing in this role,” Panagiotakopoulos wrote.

The CDC and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) did not respond to a request for comment by press time.

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Panagiotakopoulos promoted COVID vaccination for pregnant women

Panagiotakopoulos was a member of a working group of the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which makes vaccine-related recommendations.

She was co-leader of a group tasked with gathering information that would be presented at ACIP meetings.

In October 2022, ACIP members unanimously recommended adding COVID-19 vaccines for children as young as 6 months old to the CDC childhood schedule.

In October 2023, the committee recommended expanding the childhood and adult immunization schedules, including recommendations for pregnant women.

The CDC approved the recommendations last year.

“For years, ACIP has pushed aggressive vaccine schedules — including for pregnant women — despite real safety concerns and lack of supporting data,” said Nebraska chiropractor Ben Tapper, a critic of COVID-19 vaccines. “ACIP’s response has been the same every time: approve, recommend and move on. No accountability. No transparency.”

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Panagiotakopoulos played a key role in the CDC’s COVID-19 vaccine response efforts, creating a registry that monitored the safety of COVID-19 vaccines administered during pregnancy.

Panagiotakopoulos also co-authored journal articles focusing on efforts to promote COVID-19 vaccination among pregnant women.

According to a paper she co-authored, published in January in Open Forum Infectious Diseases, “Understanding COVID-19 vaccination patterns and timing is important to assess adherence to vaccination recommendations among this high-risk population.”

Sayer Ji, founder of GreenMedInfo and co-founder of Stand for Health Freedom, said Panagiotakopoulos’ resignation “isn’t just a personnel change — it’s a signal flare.”

“Dr. Panagiotakopoulos helped shape the CDC’s COVID-19 vaccine policy, including its controversial push on pregnant women. Her abrupt departure suggests internal fracture and quiet dissent,” Ji said.

‘A massive reversal of policy’

Panagiotakopoulos presented data at ACIP’s April meeting on Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine and options for the 2025-26 vaccination schedule.

According to Reuters, the working group “had been leaning toward” narrowing use of the vaccines — but recommending “broader use for certain at-risk populations, including very young children and pregnant women who are at high risk of COVID complications.”

Last week, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. rejected these recommendations, announcing that the COVID-19 vaccine would be removed from the CDC’s recommended immunization schedule for children and pregnant women.

However, as The Defender reported, the CDC didn’t remove the vaccine from the schedule. Instead, the agency added a note stating that, instead of a universal recommendation that all children ages 6 months and older receive the COVID-19 shots, the CDC now recommends “shared clinical decision-making” between parents and providers for children ages 6 months to 17 years who are not moderately immunocompromised.

Reuters reported that this decision “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.”

“That’s a massive reversal of policy. And the fact that one of the CDC’s own experts couldn’t stand by and endorse it anymore should be setting off alarms,” Tapper said.

However, experts who spoke with The Defender said ACIP is only an advisory committee, and that the CDC director — and HHS more generally — aren’t bound by ACIP’s recommendations. They can and sometimes do make independent decisions.

For example, in October 2021, former CDC Director Rochelle Walensky overruled ACIP when she decided to recommend COVID-19 boosters for everyone age 16 and older. ACIP recommended against the boosters, citing the lack of safety and efficacy data on the vaccine for 16- and 17-year-olds.

CBS News quoted an unnamed “federal health official” who connected Panagiotakopoulos’ resignation to Kennedy’s policy change. “More of us should be resigning in protest,” this unnamed official said.

Panagiotakopoulos’ resignation comes less than a month after Dr. Marty Makary, U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) commissioner, and Dr. Vinay Prasad, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, published an editorial in The New England Journal of Medicine detailing a new “radical framework” for approving vaccines.

As part of this framework, COVID-19 vaccine approvals will be limited to the elderly and high-risk groups.

ACIP ‘riddled with conflicts of interest’

ACIP has frequently been the target of criticism over conflicts of interest involving its members.

“The committee is riddled with conflicts of interest,” Tapper said. “Ties to Pharma, revolving doors with government agencies and an utter lack of independent oversight. It’s not evidence-based medicine, it’s institutional groupthink backed by corporate money.”

Ji accused ACIP of failing to act as an independent watchdog. “It’s become a captured body, advancing policy over science, compliance over caution. Panagiotakopoulos’ exit is a symptom of a system under strain — and a warning that the narrative is cracking.”

“The narrative is quietly changing,” Tapper said. “No more blanket recommendations. No more one-size-fits-all shots.” Tapper noted, however, that “there’s no admission they got anything wrong — just silence and resignations.”

ACIP’s next meeting is scheduled for June 25-27. According to Reuters, the committee will likely discuss and vote on COVID-19 vaccine recommendations.

Reuters cited unnamed sources who said the working group continues to meet “and is preparing to make recommendations to the full group of ACIP advisers at their upcoming meeting.”

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