The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has canceled an upcoming meeting with an independent advisory committee that offers recommendations on vaccine formulas, raising concerns among some of its members about potential harms to vaccine manufacturing.

An FDA spokesperson confirmed the cancellation of its March 13 meeting with the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, which was scheduled to discuss the influenza strains that are expected to circulate and cause illness during the 2025-2026 influenza season in the Northern Hemisphere.

“The FDA will make public its recommendations to manufacturers in time for updated vaccines to be available for the 2025-2026 influenza season,” a spokesperson told HuffPost in an email Thursday.

Two committee members told HuffPost that no reason was given for the cancellation.

“There are concerns from the other committee members as to what is going on and why,” Dr. Paul Offit of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia said in an email.

Fellow member Dr. Anna Durbin of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health also expressed concern about potential harms this may cause to vaccine manufacturing.

“I am concerned as it will make it much more difficult for manufacturers to produce an updated influenza vaccine for the 2025-2026 flu season,” she said in an email. “It is not clear who made the decision to cancel the meeting or why the meeting was cancelled.”

Selecting strains for the flu vaccine is usually performed in February or March using data from the World Health Organization, which the Trump administration severed ties with last month. After strains are selected, the vaccine’s manufacturing often starts in June, Richard Hughes, a lawyer for some vaccine makers, told The New York Times.

“The stakes are incredibly high,” he told the outlet of the process.

Though influenza viruses are detected year-round in the U.S., the viruses are most common in the fall and winter, with cases peaking between December and February. The public is advised to get the latest flu vaccine, containing the influenza virus strains that are expected to circulate in the U.S., at the end of October to receive the best protection against severe illness or even death.

Last flu season, there were 390,000 to 830,000 flu-related hospitalizations in the U.S. and 25,000 to 72,000 flu-related deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The meeting’s cancellation follows President Donald Trump’s appointment of prominent vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the FDA.

Kennedy told lawmakers during his Senate confirmation earlier this month that he supports vaccines and would not discourage people from getting vaccinated as health secretary, though he also has a long history of urging people to “resist” federal guidelines on when kids should get vaccinated and has promoted the false claim that vaccines cause autism.

Dr. Offit has previously warned that appointing Kennedy as health secretary would make vaccines less accessible to the public.

“He has told you who he is for the last 20 years. He has been a vigorous, vehement, anti-vaccine activist,” he told PBS “NewsHour” in an interview late last month. “If he is in a position to do something about it, I think he would do everything he can to make vaccines less affordable and less available.”