A planned meeting of a U.S. Food and Drug Administration panel to recommend the makeup of seasonal flu shots for the 2025-26 influenza season was abruptly canceled Wednesday, according to 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.

If the meeting originally set for March 13 is not rescheduled promptly, it could delay production and distribution of shots to protect Americans against the disease, another official said.

Flu sickens millions and causes between 6,300 and 52,000 deaths each year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“I don’t understand who did this or why it was done,” Offit said in an email.

In a statement to Spectrum News' Reuben Jones on Thursday, the FDA confirmed the meeting was canceled, but added the agency “will make public its recommendations to manufacturers in time for updated vaccines to be available for the 2025-2026 influenza season.”

The advisory committee meets every spring to consider recommendations on which strains should be included in the upcoming flu vaccine. 

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, Offit said.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order last month beginning the process of withdrawing the United States from the WHO. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also ordered agency staff to end any collaborations with the WHO, NBC News reported.

Despite that, members of the FDA and CDC are expected to virtually attend a WHO meeting Friday to discuss next winter’s flu vaccine, Stat News reported. 

Last week, the CDC postponed a public meeting of its independent panel of vaccine experts, which issues vaccine recommendations and determines which immunizations are covered by health insurance and made free to eligible children.

Earlier this month, the Senate confirmed Robert F. Kennedy, a vaccine skeptic, as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.

Politico reported last week Kennedy is planning to remove members of the federal government’s advisory committees and replace them with others whom he believes do not have conflicts of interest with pharmaceutical companies.