The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, will gather this week for its second regular meeting of the year, but this won’t be a typical meeting.

ATLANTA — U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s new vaccine advisory committee backed another option to protect infants against a dangerous virus — before turning to questions about fall flu vaccines and a preservative in a small fraction of them that some antivaccine groups have falsely tied to autism.

The seven new members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, picked by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who replaced the previous 17-member ACIP, first met on Wednesday with