CDC Director Outlines Plan To Overhaul Agency

The New York Times reports:

Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, on Wednesday delivered a sweeping rebuke of her agency’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, saying it had failed to respond quickly enough and needed to be overhauled.

In a meeting with senior staff, Dr. Walensky outlined in broad terms a plan to reorganize the agency’s structure to prioritize public health needs and efforts to curb continuing outbreaks, and to put less emphasis on publication of scientific papers about rare diseases.

The steps announced on Wednesday grew out of an external review Dr. Walensky had ordered in April, after months of scathing criticism of the C.D.C.’s response to the pandemic. Its public messages on masking and other mitigation measures were sometimes so confusing or abruptly modified that they seemed more like internal drafts than carefully considered proclamations.

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Breaking News: The head of the CDC said the agency had failed to respond quickly enough to the coronavirus pandemic and would overhaul its operations. An external review concluded that its public guidance about Covid was “confusing and overwhelming.” https://t.co/XsZc2BDUUo

— The New York Times (@nytimes) August 17, 2022