Trump's new CDC chief: A Washington health insider with a libertarian streak

Departing CDC officials say Monarez’s firing was the final straw and political meddling is a problem

Robert F.

A new government report shows Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine gave children 5 and older strong protection against hospitalization and death even during the omicron surge.

U.S. health officials are setting the stage for a national COVID-19 vaccination campaign for younger children, inviting state officials to pre-order doses starting next week.

Although philanthropy has taken steps to increase the flow of grant dollars to people with disabilities in recent years, disability advocates say the broad push among foundations to incorporate diversity, equity, and inclusion in their work has largely left people with disabilities out, both in terms of grants and representation on foundation boards and staff.

Walensky, 51, an infectious-diseases specialist at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, is expected to become CDC director after Biden is inaugurated. Redfield kept a low profile during his first two years in office after being appointed by the Trump administration in 2018. Much of that has to do with cycles of funding for the national public health system that rise in reaction to a crisis and then fall, hurting efforts to prevent the next crisis. Last week, Biden said he would ask for $160 billion for vaccinations and other public health programs, including an effort to expand the public health workforce by 100,000 jobs. Georgetown's Westmoreland called for a law or other measure to prohibit political appointees from having editorial review of CDC science and to ban them from controlling when the agency releases information.

NEW YORK – U.S. health officials on Friday dropped a controversial piece of coronavirus guidance and said anyone who has been in close contact with an infected person should get tested. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention essentially returned to its previous testing guidance, getting rid of language posted last month that said people didn’t need to get tested if they didn't feel sick. That change had set off a rash of criticism from health experts who couldn't fathom why the nation's top public health agency would say such a thing amid the pandemic. He said the August changes had been “misinterpreted” and were part of an effort to increase engagement by doctors and local health officials in the handling of potential illness clusters. Adriane Casalotti, of the National Association of County and City Health Officials, said the now-deleted guidance caused confusion among the public.

But federal public health officials have released a new strategy that vows to improve data collection and take steps to address stark inequalities in how the disease is affecting Americans. The hospitalization rate for Black and Hispanic Americans is more than four times higher than for whites, according to CDC data through mid-July. The agency also said it will take steps to diversify the public health workforce responding to the epidemic. The CDC appointed Liburd, an agency veteran, in May to better address such issues the first time the agency had created that kind of leadership role for an epidemic. The goal was to make her a central figure in the agency's coronavirus work, with input on research and other tasks.

What's all this talk about a second wave of U.S. coronavirus cases? In The Wall Street Journal last week, Vice President Mike Pence wrote in a piece headlined There Isnt a Coronavirus Second Wave'" that the nation is winning the fight against the virus. But there is at least one point of agreement: Second wave is probably the wrong term to describe what's happening. When you have 20,000-plus infections per day, how can you talk about a second wave?" But in those cases, the second wave is a distinct new surge in cases from a strain of flu that is different than the strain that caused earlier illnesses.