NEW YORK (AP) – As the coronavirus swept across the world last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sank into the shadows, undermined by some of its own mistakes and suppressed by a government bent on suffering the nation to play down.
Now, a new CDC director comes for a gigantic task: reaffirm the agency as the pandemic is in its deadliest phase yet and the country’s largest-ever vaccination campaign is ravaged by confusion and delays.
“I don’t know if the CDC is broken or just temporarily injured,” but something needs to be done to restore it to health, said Timothy Westmoreland, a Georgetown University law professor who works in public health.
The job lies with Dr. Rochelle Walensky, 51, an infectious disease specialist at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, who is expected to become CDC director this week – a time when the death toll from the virus in the US exceeds 400,000 and continues to accelerate .
While the agency has retained some of its top scientific talent, public health experts say, it has a long list of needs, including new protections from political influence, a comprehensive overview of its pandemic missteps, and more money to fund basic functions such as disease tracking and genetic analysis.
Walensky has said one of her top priorities will be to improve the CDC’s communication with the public in order to restore confidence. Within the bureau she wants to raise morale, largely by restoring the primacy of science and putting politics aside.
The speed with which she takes the job is unusual. In the past, the position was generally unfilled until a new health and human services secretary was confirmed, and that official appoints a CDC director. But this time, Biden’s transition team called Walensky ahead of time so she could take over the reins of the agency even before her boss was in place.
Walensky, an HIV researcher, has not worked at the CDC or in any state or local health department. But she has emerged as a prominent voice on the pandemic, sometimes criticizing certain aspects of the national and national response. Her goals included the measures to prevent uneven transmission in effect last summer and the endorsement of a prominent Trump advisor of a “herd immunity” approach. that would let the virus run wild.
She recognized the weaknesses in her resume. “When people write about me as the selection for this position, they will say, ‘But she has no real-life public health experience,'” she said during a podcast with the Journal of the American Medical Association..
The podcast presenter, Dr. Howard Bauchner, who is also the magazine’s editor, praised her enthusiastically. “I can’t imagine the CDC and the country having any better luck… especially because you can communicate, which is such an important job for the head of the CDC,” he said.
Walensky did not respond to interview requests from The Associated Press.
She succeeds Dr. Robert Redfield, 69, who came to the CDC with a resume similar to an outsider from academia. Redfield remained unremarkable during his first two years in office after being appointed by the Trump administration in 2018. Veteran CDC scientists have dealt with crises such as a deadly national increase in hepatitis A cases among the homeless and illegal drug users, and a mysterious spike in serious illness in people who have vaporized electronic cigarettes.
The agency’s approach to the COVID-19 outbreak began in a similar fashion. Staff scientists took the lead and regularly held news conferences to keep the public informed of the emerging problem.
But the agency stumbled in February when a test for the virus sent to states was found to be flawed. Later in the month, Dr. Nancy Messonnier, a leading CDC infectious disease expert, upset the Trump administration by speaking candidly at a press conference. about the dangers of the virus when President Donald Trump downplayed it.
Within weeks, the desk was pushed off the stage. Redfield made an appearance, but he was often a third-level speaker after comments dominated by Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, and others.
The CDC “has been sidelined, reviled, has been a punching bag for many politicians in the outgoing government. And that has had a detrimental effect on the agency’s ability to fulfill its mission, ”says Dr. Richard Besser, a former CDC official who now heads the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
White House officials have also taken steps to check the CDC’s scientific reports and guidelines on its website. For example, the agency has removed the guidance that recommended limiting church choir activities, even though studies had shown the danger of prolonged transmission of song indoors. The agency also dropped guidelines advising that anyone who came into close contact with an infected person should get tested – and then re-adopt it after criticism of health professionals.
“People across the political spectrum have had reason to question the veracity and accuracy of the CDC’s reports,” said Adriane Casalotti of the National Association of County and City Health Officials.
While public health veterans say they don’t know everything that happened behind the scenes, they say Redfield apparently didn’t stand up for scientists at the agency, Trump and those around him refused to argue, and passively allowed that the Trump administration published its messages on CDC websites.
“He was unwilling to resign if necessary, or to be fired for standing up for the principle,” said David Holtgrave, a former CDC staffer who is now dean of the public health school at the State University of New. York in Albany.
Redfield declined to be interviewed.
The pandemic also exposed some CDC failures and weaknesses unrelated to politics. The problem with the test kit was linked to lab contamination at the agency’s headquarters in Atlanta – a sign of sloppiness. The CDC also lost its status as the national resource for case counting and other measures of the epidemic after university researchers and others developed better systems for detecting infections.
Much of that has to do with funding cycles for the national public health system that rise in response to a crisis and then fall, harming efforts to prevent the next crisis.
Last week, Biden said he would charge $ 160 billion for vaccinations and other public health programs, including an effort to expand the public health workforce. with 100,000 jobs.
Georgetown’s Westmoreland called for a law or other measure to prohibit political appointees from receiving an editorial review of CDC science and to prohibit them from checking when the agency releases information. He also recommended a review of the CDC to determine if the agency’s problems can be traced to mismanagement by Trump’s political appointees or if there are deeper flaws in the organization.
Some experts suggest that an administration that values science and increases funding could bring the CDC back to the forefront. Biden has promised to put scientists at the forefront of COVID-19 cases, Besser noted.
“That’s something I think will be resolved on the first day,” he said. “One of the things that gives me hope is that I haven’t seen a major exodus from CDC in the past year. I saw professionals do their job. I saw the mental toll they were taking, but I did not see them give up. “
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The Associated Press Department of Health and Science is supported by the Science Education Department of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The AP is solely responsible for all content.