CDC advisers are expected to meet to consider a major change to the childhood vaccine schedule.

An advisory panel for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention voted 8-3 to recommend a two-month delay in giving hepatitis B vaccinations to newborn children, a decision that could reverse decades of declines in new infections, public health officials say.

The CDC's influential Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices announced its decision Dec. 5, a day after it postponed the vote in a contentious meeting.

The panel said parents of babies born to mothers testing negative for hepatitis B should decide for themselves whether their infants should be vaccinated immediately. However, it said newborns of mothers diagnosed with the virus should be vaccinated at birth.

All newborn infants currently get the first of three vaccine doses against the highly infectious virus automatically within 24 hours after birth.

What is hepatitis B?

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Hepatitis B is a liver disease caused by a virus that infects and damages the organ. Learn more about the vaccine for it here.

The hepatitis B vaccine is usually given in a series of two to three shots over six months, which provides long-term protection.

How new cases of acute hepatitis B have declined

Vaccines against hepatitis B were developed in the 1980s and refined a decade later. Since the current three-dose regimen was adopted in 1991, hepatitis B infections among children and teens have dropped 99%, USA TODAY reported.

Though the advisory committee makes recommendations to the CDC, neither it or the federal government makes policy. States write their own vaccination laws, though many are connected to the advisory panel's recommendations.

The advisory committee itself has undergone controversial changes. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired all 17 sitting members of the panel in June and replaced them with choices of his own. Kennedy is viewed by many as a vaccine skeptic.

CONTRIBUTING Ken Alltucker and Hannah Yasharoff

SOURCE USA TODAY Network reporting and research; Reuters; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Hepatitis B Foundation; Cleveland Clinic

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: CDC panel delays hepatitis B vaccine for newborns. What's next?

Reporting by Jennifer Borresen and George Petras, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect