NEW YORK — Dr Rochelle Walensky, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, submitted his resignation on Friday, saying the waning COVID-19 pandemic was a good time to make the switch.
Walensky’s last date will be June 30, CDC officials said, and an interim director was not immediately named. She sent her resignation letter to President Joe Biden and announced the decision at a CDC staff meeting.
Walensky, 54, has been the agency’s director for more than two years. In her letter to Biden, she expressed “mixed feelings” about the decision and did not say exactly why she was stepping down, but said the nation was at a point of transition as the emergency declarations ended. end.
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“I have never been more proud of anything I have done in my professional career,” she wrote.
The World Health Organization said on Friday that COVID-19 no longer qualifies as a global emergency and declared the US public health emergency to expire next week. The number of deaths in the United States is at its lowest level since the early days of the coronavirus outbreak in early 2020.
CDC, with a budget of $12 billion and over 12,000 employees. is an Atlanta-based federal agency responsible for protecting Americans from disease outbreaks and other public health threats.
Walensky, formerly an infectious disease specialist at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, had no experience running a government health agency when she was sworn in on the first day of the Biden administration. .
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She has a reputation as a prominent voice on the pandemic, sometimes criticizing certain aspects of the government’s response. She was brought in to raise morale at the CDC, rebuild public trust in the agency, and improve the agency’s sometimes awkward response to the pandemic.
She has established an outbreak forecasting and analysis center, taking steps to modernize data and improve the public health workforce. Last year, she began a reorganization to make the agency more flexible and improve its ability to communicate with the public.
But there were also stumbling blocks during her tenure.
By spring 2021, Walensky said people who are fully vaccinated could stop wearing masks in many places, only to reverse course as the new delta variant then spreads. And by December 2021, the agency’s decision to shorten the quarantine period made many people surprised and confused.
In a statement, White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients praised her performance.
“Her creativity, skill, and expertise, as well as pure guts, are essential to our effective response and historic restoration that helps Americans live across the globe,” said Zients. The country is getting better.
