The Trump administration has terminated a federal advisory committee that issued guidance about preventing the spread of infections in health care facilities.
The Healthcare Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee (HICPAC) crafted national standards for hand-washing, mask-wearing and isolating sick patients that most U.S. hospitals follow.
Four committee members said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention delivered the news about HICPAC’s termination to members Friday.
A letter reviewed by NBC News — which members said the CDC sent out after a virtual meeting — says the termination took effect more than a month previously, on March 31. According to the letter, the termination aligns with President Donald Trump’s executive order calling for a reduction of the federal workforce.
Four professional societies previously asked Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in a letter on March 26 to preserve the committee amid widespread cuts to federal health agencies. The CDC and the Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
Several of the committee’s web pages have been archived, meaning they are still available to view online but are no longer being updated.
Some members now say they fear that its guidelines will be frozen in time, unable to evolve with new scientific research or the spread of drug-resistant organisms, which are a particular threat to hospitals.
“At some point, when things need to change, the guidelines likely won’t change, and then people will be sort of flying by the seat of their pants,” said Connie Steed, a HICPAC member since 2023 and former president of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology.
Dr. Anurag Malani, a fellow at the Infectious Diseases Society of America who joined HICPAC in January, said the committee was close to finalizing new guidelines for airborne pathogens before the termination. The guidelines, which had not been updated since 2007, included a controversial recommendation that would allow surgical masks in lieu of N95 respirators to prevent the spread of certain pathogens.
“There was really a lot of important material in there and, I think, a lot of lessons learned from Covid that helped shape those guidelines to put us in a better place than we were pre-pandemic,” Malani said.
Jane Thomason, the lead hygienist at National Nurses United — a union for registered nurses that criticized the new mask recommendations — lamented the loss of the committee. HICPAC appointed Thomason to a work group last year.
“While we had significant concerns regarding HICPAC’s make up and proposed guidance, the termination of the committee removes important public transparency,” Thomason said in a statement Tuesday. “Without HICPAC’s public meetings, there is no longer any public access to the process for drafting CDC guidance on infection control for health care settings. This further undermines safety for patients, nurses, and other health care workers.”
According to the CDC letter Friday, HICPAC has made 540 recommendations to the agency since its inception more than three decades ago — 90% of which were fully implemented.
Malani said it is important for those recommendations to continue so infection control practices stay consistent across the country.
“You’d want to avoid seeing state and local health departments try to figure this out on their own,” he said.
