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CDC upheaval pushes public health into ‘uncharted waters’

In less than a week, the public health sector has been plunged into chaos as leaders at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) leave the agency amid heightened political tensions with the Trump administration.

© The Hill, Greg Nash

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced Wednesday that Susan Monarez would no longer serve as CDC director. This was followed by the resignations of four top leaders at the agency:

• Demetre C. Daskalakis, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases
• Daniel Jernigan, director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases (NCEZID)
• Debra Houry, CDC Chief Medical Officer

• Jennifer Layden, director for the Office of Public Health Data, Surveillance, and Technology

In an all-hands meeting following the resignations, the office that Jernigan had led signaled deep uncertainty about the future.

“These are uncharted waters,” said a senior CDC official during a Thursday all-hands meeting of NCEZID. “But we will do our best to navigate, to move forward, to do the work that we think needs to be done in the way that it needs to be done.”

Lawrence Gostin, a professor of global health law at the O’Neill Institute at the Georgetown University Law Center and director of the WHO Center on Global Health Law, said the shakeup has left the agency “weakened, gutted, and utterly dispirited.”

These developments follow a fatal shooting and mass layoffs at the agency, all of which in the past month.

For Democrats on Capitol Hill, the chaos is enough to call for HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s termination.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Friday that keeping Kennedy in the position would “make many more people sick and cause more deaths.”

“By keeping Robert Kennedy in charge of HHS, Trump is doubling down on his own failure. President Trump must admit his mistake and remove Kennedy now,” said Schumer.

Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) said, “President Trump must fire Robert F. Kennedy Jr. before he further endangers millions of American children, mothers, and families."

“If Trump does not remove Kennedy before this kook fully unleashes his crackpot conspiracy theories on America’s vaccination efforts, Trump will bear the responsibility for the unnecessary and preventable illnesses and deaths that result.”

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