Covid vaccine study the acting CDC director blocked is published in an outside journal

CovidCovid vaccine study the acting CDC director blocked is published in an outside journalThe findings suggest that Covid vaccines reduced the likelihood of severe illness last fall and winter.Listen to this article with a free account00:0000:00A woman receives a Covid shot at a vaccine clinic inside Trinity Evangelic Lutheran Church in Lansdale, Pa., on April 5, 2022.Hannah Beier / Bloomberg via Getty Images fileShareAdd NBC News to GoogleJune 23, 2026, 11:10 AM EDTBy Aria BendixA study on Covid vaccines that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s acting director blocked from publication came out Tuesday in a different journal.Subscribe to read this story ad-free Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.The findings show that Covid vaccines reduced the likelihood of severe illness by about half among adults last fall and winter. The study was originally scheduled to be released in March in the CDC’s flagship scientific publication, the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR). Instead, it was published in JAMA Network Open, a highly regarded, peer-reviewed journal from the American Medical Association. Acting Director Jay Bhattacharya raised concerns about the paper’s methodology after it had already undergone scientific review and MMWR editors had approved it, current and former CDC employees told NBC News in April.At issue for Bhattacharya was the study’s “test-negative design” — an approach that compares the vaccination status of people who test positive for a particular disease (in this case, Covid) to the vaccination status of people who test negative. The paper looked at adults who visited a hospital or urgent care with symptoms consistent with Covid across seven states from September to December last year. The group studied was tested for Covid around the time of their medical visit. Among those who tested positive and those who tested negative, the researchers calculated the odds of having received a 2025-26 formulation...