WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) — For his first major action since taking office just two weeks ago, Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has issued a 90-day stop-work order to American biotech company Vaxart Inc., which had been contracted during the Biden administration to develop a new “oral COVID-19 vaccine.”
Kennedy’s order came just as 10,000 individuals were scheduled to begin clinical trials on Monday.
HHS will utilize the 90-day hiatus to review Vaxart’s initial findings to determine the future of the human trials and continued drug development.
Approximately $460 million had been allotted to Vaxart by HHS to develop its new COVID-19 “vaccine,” of which $240 million had been authorized for the preliminary study, according to a report by Fox News Digital, which broke the story.
“While it is crucial that the Department [of] Health and Human Services support pandemic preparedness, four years of the Biden administration’s failed oversight have made it necessary to review agreements for vaccine production, including Vaxart’s,” Kennedy told Fox News Digital.
“I look forward to working with Vaxart and medical experts to ensure this work produces safe, effective, and fiscal-minded vaccine technology,” added Kennedy.
“If anyone was worried that RFK would not address vaccine damage, this is proof he’s only getting started,” declared the producers of the 2022 Died Suddenly film, which questioned the motives behind the development and mandating of the first round of COVID-19 shots and the startling number of deaths attributed to them.
There appears to be plenty of justification for pausing and even terminating Vaxart’s continued development of its “oral COVID-19 vaccine”
According to a report by The Defender’s John-Michael Dumais and published by LifeSiteNews in June, “Vaxart’s pill, VXA-CoV2-1, uses an adenovirus vector to infect epithelial cells in the lower small intestine. The vaccine delivers the genetic material to create the spike protein. The company boasts that a special coating allows the oral pill to survive the low pH in the stomach.”
“Johnson & Johnson’s (J&J) and AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccines also used adenovirus vectors,” noted Dumais, who explained:
The use of J&J’s vaccine was paused in April 2021 due to reports of thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS), a severe blood clotting disorder. In July 2021, the FDA warned about the risk of Guillain-Barré syndrome with the J&J vaccine after approximately 100 cases were reported among 12.8 million vaccine recipients. With existing doses of the J&J vaccine having expired in May 2023, the vaccine is no longer in use.
AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine also caused blood clots, resulting in temporary pauses in its use in several countries. With declining demand, it was also removed from the market in May 2023.
Vaxart’s oral COVID-19 development project is part of the Biden administration’s $4.7 billion Project NextGen initiative, launched in 2023 to accelerate the development of new COVID “vaccines.”
Vaxart’s “vaccine” was funded through a contract with the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), which falls under the umbrella of HHS’s Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response.
The pausing of Vaxart’s COVID-19 “vaccine” development can be seen as Kennedy’s first important move to fulfill his stated mission as HHS secretary.
Shortly after Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was sworn in as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), President Donald Trump signed an executive order titled Establishing The President’s Make America Healthy Again Commission (MAHA EO) to investigate and address the root causes of America’s escalating health crisis.
Chaired by Kennedy, the commission has four main policy directives to reverse chronic disease: Empower Americans through transparency and open-source data and avoid conflicts of interest in all federally funded health research; prioritize gold-standard research on why Americans are getting sick in all health-related research funded by the federal government; work with farmers to ensure that U.S. food is the healthy, abundant, and affordable; and ensure expanded treatment options and health coverage flexibility for beneficial lifestyle changes and disease prevention.
The MAHA EO came at a time when many Americans have lost trust in the nation’s healthcare system and are increasingly skeptical as to whether they are receiving honest answers about the causes of the country’s health crisis and how to improve it.