‘OVERWHELMING’

CDC Director Orders Agency Overhaul After Botched Pandemic Response

Dr. Rochelle Walensky admitted the agency had failed to respond quickly enough.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will undergo a stark transformation following a highly criticized, confusing, and mishandled pandemic response. After an extensive internal review of the CDC’s handling of the outbreak, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said the agency had failed to respond quickly enough. “For 75 years, CDC and public health have been preparing for Covid-19, and in our big moment, our performance did not reliably meet expectations,” Walensky said to The New York Times. The CDC is expected to add more staff to its public health emergencies teams, and sign them onto contracts lasting six months or more, in an agency-wide effort to avoid the high turnover that fueled confusion and delays during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Axios. It will also restructure the agency’s website and its communications office, and will deemphasize the importance of publishing scientific papers on rare diseases, turning instead to employee impact on public health.