The director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday announced plans to overhaul the center, acknowledging serious "mistakes" in handling the pandemic.
"For 75 years, CDC and Public Health have prepared for his COVID-19, but at our critical time, our performance has certainly fallen short of expectations." CDC Director Rochelle Wallenski said in a statement.
"We want to enable all of us to do better. It starts with her CDC leading the way," she said of her agency's 11,000 people. Talked about over staff.
Speaking of the response, "It's not lost on me that we fell short in so many ways."
"We've had some pretty public mistakes. A lot of this effort was to lift the mirror … to understand where and how we could improve.”
She sent a similar message to staff on Wednesday in a breaking news video , many of which could be regrouped in a "reset," a person who saw it told Bloomberg.
27} Joe Raedle/Getty Images "Frankly, it was me who made some pretty drastic and pretty public mistakes, from testing to data to communications." It's our responsibility," she reportedly admitted.
The planned 'reset' will revamp everything from the CDC's operations to its culture, moving away from a focus on academic research and instead prioritizing response to emerging emergencies. Bloomberg pointed out.
"My goal is a new public health action-oriented culture at CDC that emphasizes accountability, collaboration, communication, and timeliness," said Wallensky.
The reset was met with widespread criticism of the slow response to the pandemic, with mixed messages about masks, mandates, social distancing and testing. was done later.
There has also been growing criticism of the company's response to other public health threats, such as the alarming monkeypox epidemic. This week, she began working as a senior counselor to implement changes.
A new executive committee has also been created to help Wallenski set strategy and priorities, she said.
Overhaul is a CDC initiative, January 2021 The White House and other senior government officials claimed so, said Wallensky, who took over as director on .
"It's been a really difficult three years for him and I feel it's my responsibility to lead this institution to a better place," Wallenski said.
But Jason Schwartz, a health policy researcher at the Yale School of Public Health, stresses that the federal government's failures go beyond the CDC, as the White House and other agencies were heavily involved.
The reorganization of the CDC is a positive step, but "I hope it's not the end of the story," Schwartz said.
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