CDC Director Walensky Announces Major Agency Changes After Covid Missteps

Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, announced Wednesday she will make major modifications to the agency’s structure, including staffing changes and efforts to improve public messaging, after she said the agency failed to adequately respond to the Covid-19 pandemic, according to multiple outlets.

In a video sent to staff Wednesday morning, Walensky admitted the agency had made “pretty dramatic, pretty public mistakes” related to testing, data and communications in response to the coronavirus pandemic, according to Bloomberg, which cited an anonymous source who viewed the video.

The agency’s infrastructure was “too frail” to tackle Covid, Walensky said, according to Bloomberg.

Among the changes, Walensky plans to name a former Obama administration health official, Mary Wakefield, to help transform the CDC to focus more on public health; to hire more staff for a team that responds to public health emergencies; to create another new team to help decide how to spend the CDC’s $12 billion annual budget; to release data and scientific findings more quickly; and to ensure the CDC’s messaging is in “plain language” that’s easy to understand, according to the New York Times and Bloomberg.