Walensky, the former chief of infectious diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital, has already embarked on a listening tour at agency headquarters in Atlanta and regularly appears at the White House’s thrice-weekly Covid-19 briefings. But officials at the CDC and other federal health agencies said she has yet to lay out a vision for the CDC’s response to Covid-19 and beyond.
“I think that during 2020 the CDC was too often silenced or muzzled. And given its expertise in combating infectious diseases and pandemics, the nation really suffered from not being able to take advantage of its leaders who have day in and day out led both domestic and international efforts around infectious disease,” said John Auerbach, the CDC’s associate director from 2014 to 2016.
One of the ways Walensky plans on correcting the missteps of the prior administration is by engaging with career scientists and promoting their work, officials inside the CDC said. Part of the problem, officials said, is that the CDC is split between those who believe it needs to change and become more efficient, fast-moving and modernized and those want the old systems and structures to remain in place. That internal battle has created problems for the agency in the past. For example, many of the younger CDC officials say the agency needs to streamline the leadership structure and create less overhead by centralizing different divisions.
“The CDC needs to be transformed,” that official said. “It is a quasi-academic enterprise more interested in publishing reports and admiring data and pondering than extinguishing a pandemic.” Walensky is known across the country for her leadership in the infectious disease space and has worked with the leading minds on HIV/AIDS, her colleagues said. And she has already made it known inside the agency that reforms need to be made.
“We are constantly calling and texting each other,” Fauci said. “She’s not hesitant at all to call up and engage in active discussions about things. She doesn’t work in a vacuum. She works closely with the Biden medical team. It is a very good, collegial and enjoyable working relationship.” The gap between the federal government’s Covid-19 response and the states’ is something the CDC has tried to address over the past several months. The CDC has deployed hundreds of officials throughout the country to work with state health officials on virus surveillance and investigations. But the agency will also be ramping up its public health messaging in the coming weeks on the importance of wearing masks, social distancing and signing up for vaccination.
Too late.
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