With no official or acting CDC director, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is in charge of the CDC — and recommending vaccines is the one job he can’t delegate.

Who is in charge at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention? I reported on this last week for the Guardian — and the answer was more complicated than you might think.

It also raised questions about delays at the CDC amid the confusion.

Here’s the answer, as far as I could figure it out: Robert F. Kennedy is in charge. (But he says he isn’t. More on that part, and its potential legal ramifications, in the story.)

“Essentially, RFK Jr is the director of the CDC,” said Paul Offit, professor of pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine.

And that means Kennedy now has “a lot more opportunity to actually influence the outcome of these decisions and to take actions in the absence of a Senate-confirmed director,” said Renée Landers, professor and director of the health law program at Suffolk University Law School in Boston.

Not a Doctor is 100% free. Sign up now for more updates on health, science, and technology.

One of those actions over which he now has greater control is recommending vaccines.

Signing off — or not — on CDC recommendations cannot be “delegated down” to other officials under the Vacancies Act, said Anne Joseph O’Connell, a professor at Stanford Law School; “it can only go up” to the HHS secretary.

Yet after the April meeting, RFK Jr. didn’t take up two out of three vaccines recommended by ACIP advisers, I reported:

On May 13, “with pending confirmation of a new CDC Director,” the health secretary adopted the recommendations for Chikungunya vaccines to be officially recommended by the CDC, according to the agency’s website.

Kennedy did not sign off on the committee’s votes for two other vaccines against RSV and meningitis.

Those vaccines, recommended in April by the independent advisers whom Kennedy dismissed last month, still have not gotten official CDC recommendations; it’s not clear whether or when they will.

–Who is in charge at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention? The Guardian

It’s yet another example of the how the Trump administration is undermining vaccines, even with temporary delays like these.

Now for the news: Yesterday, after a nearly three-month delay, the CDC announced that Kennedy did sign off on the new recommendations for RSV and meningococcal vaccines.

No reason was given for the delay.

Got tips or ideas for what I should cover next? Get in touch via email (melodyaschreiber@gmail.com) or Signal (melodyschreiber.06).

Top image: Gage Skidmore