Walensky to Leave CDC; WHO Ends Global COVID-19 Emergency

Hours after the World Health Organization (WHO) ended the global emergency status for COVID-19 on Friday, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, MD, MPH, said she will leave the agency at the end of June.

Walensky sent a letter to President Joe Biden, noting the country is in a time of "transition" as public health emergencies end. The public health emergency in the United States will end on May 11.

“The end of the COVID-19 public health emergency marks a tremendous transition for our country, for public health, and in my tenure as CDC Director,” Walensky wrote. “I took on this role, at your request, with the goal of leaving behind the dark days of the pandemic and moving CDC – and public health – forward into a much better and more trusted place.

She took over the CDC in January 2021, a year after the pandemic began. In the United States, deaths are are at their lowest point since the early days of the outbreak in 2020.

Walensky came to the agency from Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham Women’s Hospital. An infectious disease specialist, she sought to improve communication and oversaw the Biden administration's vaccine rollout.

The WHO declared the COVID-19 pandemic a global public health emergency on January 30, 2020. The designation is reserved for the most severe infectious disease outbreaks; in addition to COVID-19, past emergencies have been issued for mpox, Zika, H1N1 influenza, polio, and Ebola.

“For more than a year, the pandemic has been on a downward trend, with population immunity increasing from vaccination and infection, mortality decreasing and the pressure on health systems easing,” said World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “This trend has allowed most countries to return to life as we knew it before COVID-19.”

However, Tedros emphasized that the end of the state of emergency does not mean countries should downplay the seriousness of COVID-19 or the importance of staying up to date on recommended vaccinations. This week, the WHo also unveiled an updated strategic response plan, which is aimed guiding countries in transitioning to long-term management of the disease.

Globally, 13.3 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered; nearly 7 million have died. In the United States, the pandemic killed more than 1.1 million.