The director of the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Dr. Rochelle Walensky, is resigning from the agency. Walensky is leaving CDC on June 30 and her resignation has been accepted by President Joe Biden who credited her with managing the agency well, Fox News reports.
Without citing the actual reasons for her departure, Walensky said the fact that the COVID-19 pandemic is no longer a threat makes it possible for her to leave. She said she was proud to have worked at the CDC and that she was leaving the federal agency a much better and trusted place. No replacement has been announced for her, and Walensky’s Friday announcement caught many people by surprise.
“The end of the COVID-19 public health emergency marks a tremendous transition for our country, for public health, and in my tenure as CDC Director,” Walensky wrote in her resignation letter to President Biden. “I took on this role, at your request, with the goal of leaving behind the dark days of the pandemic and moving CDC — and public health — forward into a much better and more trusted place.”
A former chief of infectious diseases at the Massachusetts General Hospital and a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, Walensky was sworn in to head the CDC when President Biden came into office. Leading a federal health agency with more than 12,000 employees and a $12 million annual budget, Walensky steered CDC when the nation was in the throes of pandemic deaths and the clamor for COVID-19 vaccines.
Jason Schwartz, a health policy expert at the Yale School of Public Health, said “No CDC director in history inherited the set of challenges she faced coming into the job,” and the White House Chief of Staff, Jeff Zients, said, “her creativity, skill and expertise, and pure grit were essential to our effective response and a historic recovery that made life better for Americans across the country.”
President Biden thanked Walensky for her services and praised her for leading an organization at the frontline of saving lives during a terrible pandemic. He said the outgoing CDC director is leaving CDC better than she met it, and that the agency is better positioned to confront health threats facing Americans.
“Dr. Walensky has saved lives with her steadfast and unwavering focus on the health of every American,” Biden said. “As Director of the CDC, she led a complex organization on the front lines of a once-in-a-generation pandemic with honesty and integrity. She marshaled our finest scientists and public health experts to turn the tide on the urgent crises we’ve faced. We have all benefited from her service and dedication to public health, and I wish her the best in her next chapter.”