In an early December call, Rochelle Walensky, director of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, greeted a weary staff facing an ominous new chapter in the pandemic response
Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, testifies before a Senate HELP Committee hearing to examine the federal response to Covid-19 and new emerging variants on Tuesday. | Shawn Thew/Pool via AP.
“It was a pep talk,” one CDC staff member on the call said. “The message was, ‘We know this is tough, but we have to keep going.'” Now, some officials said, morale is low at the CDC, as a feeling of helplessness pervades the staff. That raises questions about Walensky’s ability to usher the agency — and Americans — through the Omicron wave into a year that could bring new rounds of vaccinations and more infectious variants.
“This has been a hard several years for the people of this agency. They are tired,” Walensky said. “I have been working hard to ensure that people have adequate time away, that we are rotating people through the response and that we are providing data in real time, but only the data that are needed in real time so that people can actually take the time that they need.”
“It's the science around this and trying to understand how to mitigate the transmission. I think we've been challenged in trying to keep ahead of the science and keep ahead of the virus. And that does cause a lot of late nights and long days and missed holidays,” Walke said. “But it is not like this is the first response we've ever been involved in. I think we know what we signed up for.”In the early days of Covid-19’s spread in the U.
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