CDC overhauls management of heart that led response to Covid-19

The new director of the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention, Mandy Cohen, is overhauling the management of the CDC heart that led the company’s Covid-19 response.

In an announcement to workers issued Tuesday, Cohen stated José Romero, who headed the Nationwide Heart for Immunization and Respiratory Ailments for the previous 14 months, can be leaving the CDC on the finish of August.

“I wish to thank him for his service to this company and our nation,” Cohen stated within the memo to workers, a replica of which was obtained by STAT.

Changing Romero, at the least on an performing foundation, is Demetre Daskalakis, who has spent the previous yr in Washington as deputy director of the White Home’s nationwide mpox response staff. The White Home operation is being wound down and can be accomplished by the tip of August.

Daskalakis, who has spent a lot of his profession engaged on HIV prevention and management, was director of the CDC’s Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention within the Nationwide Heart for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention. For a lot of 2021, he led the CDC’s Covid-19 vaccine job drive.

Romero, who was Arkansas’ secretary of well being from 2020 to 2022, joined the CDC in June 2022 within the heart director function. Beforehand he served on, and was chair of, the CDC’s knowledgeable vaccine panel, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.

Two different high-ranking officers in NCIRD are being moved to different facilities inside the company. Sam Posner, who served as performing director of the middle within the second yr of the pandemic, and has been principal deputy director since Romero’s hiring, goes to be performing director of the Nationwide Heart for Damage Prevention and Management.

At NCIRD, Posner had changed Nancy Messonnier, who ran afoul of the Trump administration early within the pandemic when she publicly warned in early March 2020 that the quickly spreading virus was going to dramatically change lives. Messonnier left the CDC within the spring of 2021 and is now the dean of the Gillings College of World Public Well being on the College of North Carolina.

Kristin Pope, deputy director of NCIRD, goes to the brand new Heart for Forecasting and Analytics.