A leaked “confidential report prepared for federal vaccine advisers is raising new concerns about chronic health conditions following COVID-19 vaccination, warning that the U.S. medical system is failing to recognize and treat affected patients.
The document, dated Feb. 15, 2026, was developed by the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) COVID-19 Immunization Workgroup and circulated internally for review.
The report describes “severe, disabling chronic syndromes” following vaccination, referred to as post-acute-COVID-19-vaccination syndrome, or PACVS. Patients with PACVS present with prolonged, multi-system symptoms that can affect the neurological, cardiovascular, immune, and endocrine systems, often persisting for months or longer.
Despite growing clinical evidence, federal health authorities do not formally recognize the condition and patients are left without diagnosis, treatment pathways, and medical guidance.
Patients reporting these symptoms are often dismissed, labeled “antivaxxers,” told they are imagining their injuries, or diagnosed with functional disorders instead of recognized medical conditions.
Without diagnosis codes, physicians cannot properly document cases, leaving them absent from surveillance systems and reinforcing the view among regulators that the condition is rare or nonexistent—a dynamic the report calls a “negative feedback loop.”
To address these failures, the report outlines a set of coordinated recommendations aimed at fundamentally changing how vaccine-related injuries are identified, tracked, and treated. For example, it calls for the establishment of new ICD-10 diagnosis codes for chronic conditions following COVID-19 vaccination, aligned with existing World Health Organization codes, alongside the development of formal diagnostic guidelines and physician training to improve recognition and clinical management.
It also proposes the creation of an international network of specialized centers, coordinated by the CDC, to advance research, standardize care, and support active surveillance systems capable of capturing long-term outcomes.
The report states there is a “critical clinical and ethical need” for these changes, warning that without them, patients will continue to face underdiagnosis, misclassification as psychiatric illness, and delayed or denied care.
“This report is written with a sense of urgency,” the authors wrote calling for immediate action to recognize affected patients, improve surveillance, and establish pathways for treatment.
The report was originally supposed to be taken up at ACIP’s February meeting, but that meeting was abruptly cancelled and a judge has since prevented the committee from continuing to meet.
