National Advisory Committee on Immunization

The National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI; ; CCNI) is an external advisory body that provides the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) "with independent, ongoing and timely medical, scientific, and public health advice in response to questions from PHAC relating to immunization." It is composed of "experts in the fields of pediatrics, infectious diseases, immunology, pharmacy, nursing, epidemiology, pharmacoeconomics, social science and public health." The Committee "reports to the Vice-President of the Infectious Disease Prevention and Control Branch" of PHAC, and "works with staff of the Centre for Immunization and Respiratory Infectious Diseases" of the PHAC "to provide ongoing and timely medical, scientific and public health advice."
History.
NACI was established in 1964.
NACI became prominent during the COVID-19 pandemic, as publisher of recommendations and guidance surrounding distribution of COVID-19 vaccines. Some of those recommendations were criticized as counter-productive in terms of public health communications concerning the pandemic. One example is when on May 4, 2021, it publicly stated that it recommended the mRNA vaccines like from Pfizer–BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine and Moderna COVID-19 vaccine over the viral vector vaccines such as the Oxford–AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine and the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine ones. Various politicians and public health authorities stated that such statements concerning officially approved vaccines would encourage vaccine hesitancy and impede the public health goal of inoculating the public as quickly as possible. In response on May 6, NACI issued a follow-up statement wishing to clarify that their previous statement was not to imply that anyone taking a vaccine such as AstraZeneca was making a mistake and it was adequately effective for protecting against COVID-19.
Leadership.
The NACI is composed of at least 14 members, roughly a dozen lobby group "liaison representatives" and roughly a dozen professional Health Canada civil servant "ex-officio representatives" support staff. among whom are: