CDC admits it failed to respond effectively to Covid crisis

The agency aims to make its public messaging clearer and its responses faster

The head of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has admitted that the agency fell short in its response to the coronavirus pandemic, and announced that shakeups in the agency were coming.

The Associated Press reports that a "reset" at the organisation is coming. That's the way Dr Rochelle Walensky, the director of the CDC, put it during a press conference on Wednesday.

Dr Walensky said that the decision to change the agency was made internally and not at the request of the White House.

“I feel like it’s my my responsibility to lead this agency to a better place after a really challenging three years,” she told The Associated Press.

Dr Walensky took over the agency midway through the coronavirus pandemic in January 2021, but said the agency needed to move faster and communicate better in the future, noting its stumbles responding to Covid-19.

“It’s not lost on me that we fell short in many ways,” Dr Walensky said. “We had some pretty public mistakes, and so much of this effort was to hold up the mirror ... to understand where and how we could do better.”

During the earliest stages of the pandemic, health experts, including Dr Anthony Fauci, said masks would not be useful at stopping the virus — advisement that proved incorrect and may have helped slow some of its early spread. Health experts have also criticised the agency for being too slow to provide information to the public.

The changes Dr Walensky hopes to implement have to be approved by the Department of Health and Human Services secretary. Officials at the CDC said they hope to have the full package of their proposed changes finalised and approved by early next year.

Some of those changes include using preprint scientific reports as a basis for public messaging rather than waiting for peer review and publication in the CDC's journal "Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report”, and restructuring its communications office and websites to provide clearer and more accessible public information.

Dr Walensky is also hoping to create an executive council to help her set strategy and priorities for the agency, and to appoint a senior counselor to implement the proposed changes.

The proposed amendments would also reverse some Trump-era changes made to the agency, and seek to improve intergovernmental partnerships.