Centers for Disease Control Director Rochelle Walensky departs after testifying before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions on the All-Emergency Preparedness Bill at Dirksen’s Senate Office Constructing on Thursday, May 4, 2023 in Washington, D.C.
Kent Nishimura | Los Angeles Times | Getty Images
CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky announced Friday that she will resign at the tip of June, ending a tenure marked by repeated changes to accommodate the evolving coronavirus crisis.
Walensky didn’t give a selected reason for her departure, but noted in a letter to President Joe Biden that america was recovering from the Covid-19 crisis.
“The top of the COVID-19 public health emergency marks an enormous shift for our country, public health, and my tenure as director of the CDC,” Walensky he wrote in a letter.
“I took on this role at your request to go away the dark days of the pandemic behind me and move the CDC – and public health – to a significantly better and more trusted place,” she said.
The US public health emergency will end on Thursday. The World Health Organization declared an end to the Covid global health emergency on Friday.
In a press release, Biden thanked Walensky for her service.
“Dr. Walensky leaves the CDC with a stronger institution, higher positioned to face health threats and protect Americans,” the president said.
Walensky admitted in August 2022 that the CDC’s response to the pandemic was inadequate. It launched a reorganization to hurry up the agency’s response to disease threats and improve communication of health guidance to the general public.
Nevertheless, the CDC still struggles to reply to public health threats because of limited powers in the face of a fragmented healthcare system. The agency will have less data to trace Covid and latest variants once the general public health emergency expires since it cannot force states to report this information.
Walensky took over the leadership of the battered agency in early 2021 because the US rolled out the Covid vaccination campaign. She led the general public health agency because the national response to the pandemic faced repeated setbacks with the emergence of delta and omicron variants.
Walensky also helped lead the US response to the sudden outbreak of mpox in the summer of 2022.
She headed the infectious diseases division at Massachusetts General Hospital and was a professor of medication at Harvard Medical School before joining the Biden administration. Walensky is an HIV expert.