The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine advisory committee is set to meet for the first time since Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. dismissed the entire panel and appointed his own hand-selected members.

Earlier this month, Kennedy removed all 17 sitting members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) and appointed eight new members, some of whom have been critics of shots — especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The ACIP will meet on Wednesday, June 25, and Thursday, June 26, to review scientific data on some vaccines and vote on some fall recommendations.

Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., is calling for the delay of the meeting, however, suggesting that a now smaller, less qualified panel shouldn’t convene.

“Wednesday’s meeting should not proceed with a relatively small panel, and no CDC Director in place to approve the panel’s recommendations,” Cassidy said in a post on X.

According to a draft agenda published online, the committee will hold votes on maternal/pediatric respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) vaccines and RSV vaccines under the federal Vaccines for Children program.

Currently, RSV vaccines are recommended for pregnant people between 32 and 36 weeks of pregnancy to pass on protection to a fetus, which should last throughout their first RSV season.

For children 19 months and younger, monoclonal antibody shots are available. Monoclonal antibodies are proteins manufactured in a lab and mimic the antibodies the body naturally creates when fighting an infection. They do not activate the immune system as would occur with vaccination.

Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said the RSV vaccine and the monoclonal antibody shot have been underutilized but both have been effective.

The monoclonal antibody shot has “for children less than two months of age, caused a more than 50% reduction in hospitalization … and caused a slight decrease in infant mortality,” he told ABC News. “So enormous success.”

“It’s an unpredictable time, other than to say that you can predict that, for the most part, what’s going to come out of the ACIP is what RFK Jr.’s agenda is, which is to make vaccines less available, less affordable and more feared,” Offit added.

The committee will also vote on influenza vaccines and “thimerosal containing influenza vaccine recommendations.”

Thimerosal is a mercury-based preservative, which had been widely used in vaccines but was subsequently removed from many vaccines.

Kennedy, who has promoted vaccine-skeptic views that experts have refuted, wrote a book in 2014 falsely claiming thimerosal is “toxic to brain tissue” and may cause autism, calling for its removal from vaccines.

Most flu vaccines contain little to no thimerosal but the CDC says there is no evidence low doses of thimerosal in vaccines cause harm “except for minor reactions like redness and swelling at the injection site.”

Additionally, a 2010 CDC study found exposure to vaccines and immunoglobulins that contain thimerosal, in prenatal or infant stages, does not increase risk for autism spectrum disorder.

However, in the late 1990s, federal health agencies, the American Academy of Pediatrics and vaccine manufacturers agreed to reduce or eliminate thimerosal in vaccines as a precautionary measure, which Offit says gave rise to anti-vaccine groups alleging thimerosal is not safe.

There are no thimerosal-containing vaccines given to children less than six years old, according to Offit, but it is available in flu vaccines in multi-dose vials given to adolescents or adults.

Offit suspects that the ACIP will recommend thimerosal be removed from all vaccines regardless of age.

“And so, then what will happen? It’ll take a while to reformulate … and I imagine that would we go again from multi-dose vials to single dose vials, which will make vaccines less available, no safer and more feared,” he said.

Dr. Craig Spencer, an associate professor of the practice of health services, policy and practice at Brown University School of Public Health, said he would not be surprised if vaccines containing thimerosal were taken off the market, adding that only around 5% of the current “influenza vaccine capacity” has some thimerosal.

“I think they would be more than happy to signal that they’re making action and they’re getting wins on things that RFK Jr. has long promoted,” he told ABC News. “So I would not at all be surprised if one of the actions is to basically say move to remove thimerosal containing influenza vaccines.”

The agenda states the group will also discuss COVID-19 vaccines, chikungunya vaccines, the anthrax vaccine and the MMRV vaccine — a combination vaccine that protects against measles, mumps, rubella, and varicella — in children under 5 years old.

Kennedy has made unsupported or misleading claims about some of these shots, falsely claiming the measles vaccine leads to deaths every year and leads to illnesses caused by the disease itself. Experts say there is no evidence of those claims.

During testimony before a House committee in May, Kennedy claimed Europe doesn’t vaccinate children against varicella, or chickenpox, because preclinical trials showed “shingles in older people.” Several countries in Europe routinely vaccinate against chickenpox and, while some don’t due to shingle concerns, it is less common to develop shingles from the chickenpox vaccine than from chickenpox infection.

“It’s anybody’s question of what is going to happen, what the discussion around [MMRV] is going to be,” Spencer said. “We know that they’re continuing to push forward to figure out [causes of] autism … and we know that they will almost certainly either clearly draw a link between vaccines and autism or try to confuse and confound the relationship more to create more questions for folks.”

A vote on updated COVID-19 vaccines had been planned, according to the federal register notice posted online, so it is unclear why it is missing from the agenda.

Last month, Kennedy cut COVD-19 vaccine recommendations for “healthy children and pregnant women” without a vote from the committee and posted the announcement on X rather than through official federal channels, in a break with tradition.

The federal register had also said the committee would take up new proposals for HPV and meningococcal vaccines, but both are missing from the draft agenda.

An HHS official told ABC News discussions on the topics that were removed will occur at a future time.

The ACIP meetings are open to the public and the group has non-binding votes on potential recommendations for vaccines approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, with the CDC director finalizing the recommendation.

Currently, the CDC director role remains vacant, and Kennedy has been making the final recommendations.

Notedly, Susan Monarez, President Donald Trump’s pick for CDC director, will be at confirmation hearings before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, on the first day of the ACIP meeting.