CDC Director Walensky resigns, citing pandemic transition

An interim director wasn’t immediately named.

Friday, Walensky was hosting Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken on a visit to the Atlanta CDC campus. When news broke of her resignation, the media team at the CDC didn’t seem aware of the announcement and said they had no further comment. Asked about her resignation while giving Blinken a tour of the CDC museum, Walensky ignored the question.

Blinken said being at the CDC headquarters on the day Walensky announced her resignation was “a coincidence,” but “powerful” as he praised her leadership.

“She has been an extraordinary leader of this enterprise. She’s made our country healthier and safer,” he said. “She’s made countries around the world healthier, and I could not be more grateful for the collaboration that we’ve had during the time she was director of the CDC.”

Walensky’s departure comes as the federal government is winding down its response to the COVID pandemic. The World Health Organization said Friday that COVID no longer qualifies as a global emergency, and the U.S. public health emergency declaration will expire next week.

COVID-19 deaths in Georgia and across the U.S. are at their lowest point since the earliest days of the pandemic in early 2020.

Walensky, 54, has been the agency’s director for a little over two years. She succeeded Dr. Robert Redfield as head of the federal agency in early 2021, just as the U.S. was rolling out its COVID vaccine campaign. She said one of her top priorities was to rebuild trust with the public. Inside the agency, she set a goal to raise morale, in large part by restoring the primacy of science and setting politics to the side; a problem that festered under former President Donald Trump’s administration.

Walensky was previously an infectious-diseases specialist at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. She had no experience running a government health agency when she was sworn in on the first day of the Biden administration. She split her time between Massachusetts, where she still has family, and Atlanta where the CDC is based.

In her letter to President Joe Biden, she expressed “mixed feelings” about the decision and didn’t say exactly why she was stepping down.

“I have never been prouder of anything I have done in my professional career,” she wrote.

Emory University School of Medicine public health expert Dr. Carlos del Rio praised Walensky’s leadership in a tweet, saying “Dr. Walensky has been an excellent director who has put a lot of effort in reforming and modernizing CDC.”

The CDC has a $12 billion budget and more than 12,000 employees. Roughly 9,000 employees are based in Atlanta. The agency is charged with protecting Americans from disease outbreaks and other public health threats.

Credit: Ariel Hart

Credit: Ariel Hart

Walensky acknowledged in August 2022 that the CDC’s response to the pandemic was inadequate and launched a reorganization of the agency.

Last year, she began overhauling the organization designed to help the agency move faster when responding to a crisis and to improve its communications with the public.

Credit: Alyssa Pointer/Alyssa.Pointer@ajc.com

Credit: Alyssa Pointer/Alyssa.Pointer@ajc.com

In a statement, Biden thanked Walensky for leading a “complex organization on the frontlines of a once-in-a-generation pandemic with honesty and integrity.”

“Dr. Walensky leaves CDC a stronger institution, better positioned to confront health threats and protect Americans. We have all benefited from her service and dedication to public health, and I wish her the best in her next chapter,” Biden said.

Walensky came with a reputation as a prominent voice on the pandemic, sometimes criticizing certain aspects of how the government was responding. She started a center for forecasting and outbreak analytics, took steps to modernize data and improve the public health work force.

The Associated Press contributed to this article.