"News of the studies being pulled comes weeks after the CDC decided it wouldn’t publish a report showing last winter’s covid vaccine cut the likelihood of hospitalizations."

"The Food and Drug Administration stopped publication of studies about the safety of vaccines to protect against covid-19 and shingles in recent months, a spokesman for the Health and Human Services Department said.

One covid vaccine safety study examined the association between people who received the 2023–24 vaccine and their later experience with more than a dozen health conditions, including those that affect the heart, blood, brain and nervous system. The study, whose authors included FDA scientists, was going through a peer review process but the authors withdrew it from the journal Vaccine in October, according to Angela Rasmussen, one of journal’s editors in chief.

Journal manuscripts are confidential, she said. But she noted that an abstract of the study was presented at a conference last year and is online. “No new safety concerns were found following 2023–2024 COVID-19 vaccination among U.S. health plan enrollees aged 6 months–64 years,” the abstract said.

The New York Times reported Tuesday on two covid vaccine studies and abstracts about studies of a shingles vaccine that were blocked. STAT previously reported on the withdrawal of one of the covid papers."

Lena H. Sun and Rachel Roubein report for the Washington Post May 5, 2026. [2]