RFK Jr. Weighs Ebola, Marburg Shots Despite Vaccine Overhaul (1)

The US Department of Health and Human Services is weighing whether to fund new Marburg and Sudan Ebola virus vaccines even as Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. overhauls the US immunization landscape, according to a government filing.

Fatality rates of up to 90% are on the line from viruses in the so-called Filovirus family, the HHS’ Center for the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) said in a federal notice stating interest in eventually soliciting proposals to develop and license Marburg and Sudan Ebola virus vaccines.

There’s an “urgent need for medical countermeasures (MCMs) for filoviruses to be developed, manufactured, and stockpiled to protect the US population,” BARDA said in the notice.

“These viruses cause deadly hemorrhagic fevers, and no FDA-approved vaccines or treatments currently exist,” a spokesperson for the HHS’s Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response said in an email Wednesday.

BARDA’s notice comes as Kennedy shakes up the HHS and how it deals with vaccines. Last month, the nation’s top health officer removed all 17 members of an advisory panel to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on vaccine safety and effectiveness. Afterwards, Kennedy announced new advisory members, among whom are known vaccine critics.

Kennedy has also pulled a $766 million contract with Moderna Inc. to develop mRNA vaccines for influenza and announced that he was pulling the Covid-19 vaccine from the CDC’s recommended immunization list for healthy children and pregnant women.

The ASPR spokesperson said eligible vaccine candidates in this “pre-solicitation” must be in or have completed Phase 2 clinical trials.

BARDA funding may support Phase 3 studies; chemistry, manufacturing, and controls development; US-based manufacturing; nonclinical studies; assay development; and post-marketing studies required for licensure, the spokesperson said.

Though it’s not a formal solicitation, the June document suggests “BARDA has a continuing but not yet activated interest in developing additional vaccines for emergency stockpiling,” said Brook Baker, a senior policy analyst at the Health Global Access Project, adding that the center may want to signal a “message to researchers that there is continuing US interest and that early R&D efforts should not be shelved.”

“Kennedy may be a vaccine skeptic, but if there is a case for vaccines, that case is strongest when a virus is both highly contagious and highly lethal. He gets away with downplaying measles because it does not often result in hospitalizations and deaths even though it is highly contagious,” Baker said.

The BARDA notice, however, shouldn’t be seen “as a signal of any softening of the Secretary’s long-held distrust of vaccines,” said Lawrence Gostin, professor of global health law at Georgetown Law.

“HHS sees this vaccine as part of its effort to harden national security from highly lethal viruses. Secretary Kennedy does not view routine childhood diseases like measles as a national security threat. Nor does he view COVID-19 as such a threat. He has repeatedly underplayed the seriousness of diseases like measles or COVID. But often fatal viral hemorrhagic fevers frighten the public and have the potential for high death rates. And the fact that the West Africa Ebola epidemic affected hospitals in the United States has made a deep impression on the public,” Gostin said.

In BARDA’s description, a 2022 Sudan ebolavirus outbreak left 55 dead and 141 confirmed cases. Marburg, meanwhile, spurred 15 deaths and 66 confirmed cases in a 2024 outbreak.

Such outbreaks, BARDA said, emphasize the “immediate need” for vaccines.