Departing CDC chief urges Congress to help the agency restore reputation after COVID-19 failures

Rochelle Walensky told Congress on Tuesday she is leaving the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention with a “great sense of accomplishment” but said the public health agency still has work to do in restoring its reputation after the COVID-19 crisis.

The CDC director, who appeared before House investigators before her departure next month, also acknowledged that President Biden went too far by claiming in the summer of 2021 that vaccinated people would not be hospitalized or die from the coronavirus.

“In medicine, we never say never,” Dr. Walensky told Rep. Brad Wenstrup, Ohio Republican and chairman of the House Select Committee on the Coronavirus Pandemic.

Dr. Walensky was a key player in Mr. Biden’s up-and-down efforts to overcome the coronavirus during his first term. She testified the U.S. is a good place after Mr. Biden’s decision to end the public COVID-19 health emergency in May.

“Today we know so much more about this virus than we did when it first emerged,” she said. “In 2023, we believe the darkest days of this pandemic are now part of our history.”

Mr. Biden hasn’t formally nominated a replacement but The Washington Post reported he plans to pick Mandy Cohen, a former North Carolina health secretary who also served in the Obama administration.

The CDC will get new leadership during a time of flux. The agency’s reputation took a hit during the pandemic, with complaints of political interference during the Trump administration and shifting advice after Mr. Biden arrived, including confusion about whether vaccinated persons could get sick and doubt about whether cloth masks were effective against the virus.

The CDC published data on the virus that tended to be weeks or months old, making it hard to get a full grasp of the situation or forward-looking advice.

Dr. Walensky launched a reform plan, titled CDC Moving Forward, in April 2022 to address the lessons learned from COVID-19 and improve how it communicates with the public. She said Congress needs to be a willing partner to keep America prepared for the next threat.

“I commit to further this goal in my last weeks at CDC and beyond. It’s too important, and too many lives are at stake,” she said.

She called on Congress to provide resources and authorities that help the CDC collect real-time data.

“We have to stop using fax machines to get data to CDC. We need resources for data highways … so that County A knows what’s happening next door in County B,” she said.

Mr. Wenstrup said Tuesday’s hearing may have seemed backward-looking but it was important to haul Dr. Walensky to Capitol Hill before she leaves the agency so that Congress can prepare for the next crisis.

“This requires looking back in order to plan ahead,” he said.

Mr. Wenstrup said the CDC had to walk back some of Dr. Walensky’s public comments, including the belief in early 2021 that vaccinated persons would not catch the virus or be hospitalized.

“It had very high efficacy early on, up to 96%. It did change over time,” Dr. Walensky said.

Republicans also said Dr. Walensky was too cozy with the American Federation of Teachers, a major teachers union, when drafting guidance to reopen schools.

Dr. Walensky insisted she took the school situation seriously, pointing to a reopening “road map” the CDC released early in her tenure in February 2021. She said AFT wanted “closure triggers” but the agency resisted its demands and nearly every school district offered full-time instruction by fall 2021.

“Our goal in this guidance was to keep [schools] open,” she said.

Rep. James Comer, Kentucky Republican and chairman of the House Oversight Committee, was frustrated by Dr. Walensky’s reluctance to say whether the CDC pushed Facebook, Twitter or other platforms to censor COVID-19 information, including claims the virus might have leaked from a lab. 

The director said those questions were subject to litigation.

“I hear that so much on everything we do — ‘It’s currently under investigation,’” Mr. Comer said. “Did the president take a bribe? ‘It’s currently under investigation.’”