WASHINGTON: US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Susan Monarez has been fired, the White House said on Wednesday (Aug 27), less than a month after being sworn in, and four senior officials have resigned amid growing tensions over vaccine policies and public health directives.
Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F Kennedy Jr has made sweeping changes to vaccine policies, including withdrawing federal recommendations for COVID-19 shots for pregnant women and healthy children in May, and firing all members of the CDC’s expert vaccine advisory panel in June whom he replaced with hand-picked advisers including fellow anti-vaccine activists.
One of the officials that quit said the CDC’s vaccination recommendations were putting young Americans and pregnant women at risk.
White House spokesman Kush Desai late on Wednesday said Monarez was not “aligned with the President’s agenda of Making America Healthy Again”.
Since she had “refused to resign despite informing HHS leadership of her intent to do so, the White House has terminated Monarez from her position with the CDC”, Desai said.
Monarez’s attorneys, Mark S Zaid and Abbe David Lowell, denied she had resigned or had been fired, adding in a statement that “as a person of integrity and devoted to science, she will not resign”.
Monarez’s attorneys accused Kennedy of targeting her for refusing to support “unscientific directives” and dismiss health experts.
CDC Chief Medical Officer Debra Houry and National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases Director Demetre Daskalakis have resigned, Houry told Reuters. They cited a rise in health misinformation especially on vaccines, attacks on science, the weaponisation of public health, and attempts to cut the agency’s budget and influence in their resignation letters, reviewed by Reuters.
National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases Director Daniel Jernigan also stepped down, days after the agency reported the first US human case of screwworm linked to an ongoing outbreak in Central America. Jen Layden, Director of the CDC Office of Public Health Data, Surveillance and Technology, has also resigned, NBC News reported.
“Recently, the overstating of risks and the rise of misinformation have cost lives, as demonstrated by the highest number of US measles cases in 30 years and the violent attack on our agency,” Houry wrote in her resignation.
Budget cuts proposed by President Donald Trump’s administration and plans by Kennedy to reorganise the agency would harm its ability to address these challenges.
