The flu vaccine’s future is murky after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration abruptly canceled its committee meeting to recommend the makeup of seasonal flu shots for the 2025-26 influenza season.

Dr. Amesh Adalja, a Pittsburgh-based infectious disease physician and senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, said the implications of canceling the March 13 meeting are unclear.

“However, it is critical that manufacturers have enough lead time to scale up manufacturing in time for the start of influenza season,” he said, which is typically six months.

Companies that manufacture influenza vaccines rely on the FDA to pick out the strains to use in shots yearly. Specific strains are chosen based on predictions of what flu variants will be circulating come winter.

Based on insights from the FDA, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention then recommends certain vaccines to the public.

Any delay has the capacity to disrupt that process, according to Adalja, and it would not only impact Pennsylvania — it would impact the entire country.

“My initial reaction was to connect this action to the fact that an anti-vaccine activist is now the secretary,” Adalja said, referencing Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Kennedy, a vaccine skeptic, has been critical of vaccine advisory committees for potential conflicts of interest and influence from the pharmaceutical industry.

“The fact is, having him in that position emboldens people to follow his lead,” Adalja previously told TribLive. “That’s a victory for the anti-vaccine forces.”

Flu sickens millions and causes between 6,300 and 52,000 deaths each year, according to the CDC. The CDC estimates 430,000 hospitalizations and 19,000 deaths from flu so far this season.

In Pennsylvania, influenza activity remains “very high,” but it’s decreasing from previous weeks, according to the state’s Respiratory Virus Dashboard.

As of Feb. 22, there were 172,271 confirmed flu cases across the state since Sept. 29 and 453 flu-related deaths, the dashboard showed. That’s up from 125,640 cases during the same period a year earlier.

During that period, there have been 14,553 flu cases in Allegheny County and 3,801 cases in Westmoreland, according to the dashboard.

The state also reported that, as of Feb. 15, new hospital admissions for the flu were high for both pediatric and adult patients — and increasing for adult patients.

Dr. Carol Fox, chief medical officer of Independence Health System, said the influenza vaccine is a “critical tool” in protecting community health, especially the most vulnerable populations like the medically complex, immunocompromised and elderly.

“Influenza poses a significant risk to these individuals, and timely access to the vaccine is essential to reducing serious illness and complications,” she said in a statement. “Ensuring a reliable and timely supply is vital to safeguarding the health of our patients and the broader Western Pennsylvania community.”

UPMC and Allegheny Health Network did not have anyone available for comment Thursday.

Dr. Paul Offit, a vaccine expert at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and a member of the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, spoke out to multiple media outlets about the cancellation.

“It’s a six-month production cycle,” he told the New York Times. “So one can only assume that we’re not picking flu strains this year.”

Offit said that’s because the flu vaccine is grown by scientists.

“March is six months before September, which is when these vaccines roll out,” he told CBS News.

The FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee was supposed to meet March 13 to discuss how to update the shots for the next flu season, Offit said.

Some of the other committee members said they had not received any notification about the upcoming meeting being canceled, the outlet said, but Offit said the email he received was addressed to all of the committee’s members.

A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services confirmed Thursday that the meeting was canceled.

“I don’t understand who did this or why it was done,” Offit said. “I don’t know what this means.”

He said that, in the absence of the U.S. panel’s recommendation, officials would turn to the World Health Organization to determine which strains to include in the next season’s shots. The panel often largely adopts the WHO’s recommendations without changes.

Though it’s possible for the FDA to pick the flu shots without consulting the panel, it would be unprecedented in recent history.

The committee’s input in recent years has incited major changes — such as a push to abandon the use of a now-extinct fly strain in the shots, according to CBS News.

Adalja said it’s also unclear what the prospect is for rescheduling the canceled meeting.

Offit said there’s “no indication it’s been postponed,” but rather, it’s been canceled.

Tom Davidson and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

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