09/09/2022
The US prioritizes protecting public health after learning about the epidemic
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has announced it will prioritize the public health response as it reshuffles the structure after months of criticism over its handling of COVID-19 and the monkeypox outbreak. .
According to a report document released by the agency on August 17, the US CDC acknowledged that the guidelines for the public when the pandemic hit were misleading. Some important information is sometimes released too late and affects the federal government's decision-making process.
To address these delays, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said the US CDC is making a series of changes to help the unit respond faster, providing data faster.
“For the past 75 years, the CDC and public health agencies have been preparing for COVID-19. However, by the critical moment, our performance did not live up to our expectations. I want us all to do better and CDC will be at the forefront of this transformation,” Director Walensky told CDC staff, noting that the focus will be on creating a coordinated, action-oriented culture. timely communication.
CDC modernization plans include giving CDC new authority to require states to report data. The changes will also allow CDC to speed up the hiring process and offer more competitive salaries. These two powers need to be approved by the National Assembly.
CDC will appoint Mary Wakefield, a former Deputy Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services under the Obama administration, to lead a team to help implement the restructuring. To improve coordination across units, Ms. Walensky wants to create an online mechanism to share findings before they are officially published.
During the first two months of the monkeypox outbreak, a lack of data hampered efforts to predict the direction of the disease in the United States. Director Walensky said she feels helpless when the CDC's authority is again limited to collecting case information from the states.
“We would love to get as much information as possible and make it available to the American public. But again, like with COVID-19, we're baffled by the fact that we don't have the authority to receive that data. We're trying our best," she told the Washington Post on July 22.
She pointed out that the CDC does not have data on people who have been vaccinated against monkeypox and does not have the authority to ask health departments for information.
The only data on monkeypox vaccines that the CDC makes public are weekly updates from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) about vaccine distribution to individual states.
Bao Ha/Newspaper (According to Reuters)
