Outgoing CDC Chief Rochelle Walensky Warns US ‘Ill Prepared' for Next Pandemic

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in Washington on May 4, 2023. Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images

The United States is ill-prepared for another global pandemic, according to the outgoing director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Dr. Rochelle Walensky.

Walensky issued the warning in a New York Times guest essay published on June 27, just days before she is set to step down from her role.

President Joe Biden revealed earlier this month that Walensky, 54, will be replaced by Dr. Mandy Cohen, the former top health official in North Carolina who has aggressively supported COVID-19 vaccines and widespread masking.

In her essay, Walensky cited multiple public health challenges that have taken place across the world in recent years, including the ever-evolving COVID-19 pandemic, the monkeypox outbreak, and the largest outbreak of Ebola disease in Uganda, which was caused by the Sudan ebolavirus.

She also pointed to the first case of paralytic polio identified in the United States in nearly a decade. The type 2 vaccine-derived poliovirus was reported in a resident of Rockland County, located about an hour from New York City, in September 2022. The individual became infected after taking an oral polio vaccine that is no longer taken in the United States, according to the CDC.

Walensky went on to note that over 80,000 immigrants from Afghanistan have arrived and settled in the United States in recent years, some of whom she said have cases of active measles and other diseases that were previously contained. Additionally, the “largest and longest” highly pathogenic avian influenza outbreak among flocks of birds continues across the globe, she said.

“Public health work will continue to be critically important and the challenges just as complex,” Walensky wrote. “Yet I fear the despair from the pandemic is fading too quickly from our memories, perhaps because it is too painful to recall a ravaged nation brought to its knees.”

Dr. Mandy Cohen, COO and chief of staff of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, attends a House Ways and Means Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington on Nov. 3, 2015. Mark Wilson/Getty Images

CDC ‘Battered by Persistent Scrutiny‌‌’

Walensky went on to claim that the CDC has been “sidelined” and “battered by persistent scrutiny‌‌” over mistakes it made early on in the COVID-19 pandemic.

Walensky has been widely criticized for her agency’s response to the pandemic, and has made false statements about vaccine efficacy, child mortality. CDC officials previously admitted the health agency had made some “pretty dramatic, pretty public mistakes.”

However, Walensky stressed that the U.S. response to the pandemic was hampered in part by “decades of underinvestment in public health,” which she said had rendered ‌‌the nation “ill-prepared for a global pandemic.”

This, she said, could also seriously impact future responses to pandemics.

“Some estimates suggest we are 80,000 public health workers short across the ‌United States to meet basic public health needs. ‌To this day some of our public health data systems‌‌ are reliant on old fax machines‌,” she wrote. ‌“National laboratories lack both state-of-the-art equipment and ‌skilled bench scientists to work them. During the pandemic, the answer to these prevailing problems was a rapid infusion of money ‌‌— resources that were swiftly withdrawn.”

A nurse at Three Rivers Asante Medical Center runs to a room in the Intensive Care Unit to help as medical staff treat a COVID-19 patient in Grants Pass, Ore., on Sept. 9, 2021. Nathan Howard/Getty Images

More Public Health Investments Needed

“It is not enough to support public health when there is an emergency. The roller coaster influx of resources during a‌ crisis, followed by underfunding after the threat is addressed, exposes a broken system‌ and puts future lives at risk,” Walensky continued.

“Longstanding, sustainable investments are needed across public health, over time and administrations, to position the ‌United States to be better prepared for the next large-scale infectious disease outbreak or ‌other health threat,” she wrote.

“I want to remind America: The question is not if there will be another public health threat, but when,” the outgoing CDC director concluded. “The C.D.C. needs public and congressional support if it is going to be prepared to protect you from future threats.”

Walensky joins a handful of other health officials who have warned that further preparation is needed ahead of another potential pandemic.

Back in May, World Health Organization (WHO) director-general Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stressed that the end of the COVID-19 global health emergency “is not the end of COVID-19 as a global health threat.”

“The threat of another variant emerging that causes new surges of disease and death remains, and the threat of another pathogen emerging with even deadlier potential remains,” the WHO director said, adding that more “effective global mechanisms” are needed to better address and respond to future emergencies.

“When the next pandemic comes knocking – and it will – we must be ready to answer decisively, collectively, and equitably,” he said.

While the number of new COVID-19 cases and fatalities have continued to decline worldwide, China is currently experiencing a resurgence in such cases, driven mainly by Omicron mutant strains.