{O/C} CDC director Rochelle Walensky today announced a CDC reshuffle to rejig the agency.
This, after she cited the unpalatable agility of the CDC in its COVID response.
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[Notes: Courtesy of CBS News]
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ROCHELLE WALENSKY, Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:
I think our public health infrastructure in the country was not up to the task of handling this pandemic.
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It's not a new broom sweeping clean, but given countless false dawns and the painstaking COVID battle, Walensky admitted that was the last resort.
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We learned some hard lessons over the last three years, and as part of that, it's my responsibility, it's the agency's responsibility to learn from those lessons and do better.
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Three years since the pandemic launched its first ferocious offensive, and the bruising defeat has called for rejuvenating the ponderous agency.
Encompassed by the overhaul are a new executive council, new equity office and streamlining its website.
This, after its sprawling bureaucracy hindered its analysis of data and led to sluggish and often baffling dissemination of guidelines.
White House officials never contributed to the initiative.
She also plans to ask Congress for more powers as well as U.S. states to disclose their COVID data.
It was a monumental step forward, says this expert.
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KAVITA PATEL, NBC News Medical Contributor:
This speaks to not just the intent to acknowledge it but the action that must follow and the accountability.
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Public support for the agency has clearly crumbled given waves of COVID have battered the United States repeatedly.
On the monkeypox front, only a million jabs are available.
Some among the 37 percent inoculated against polio in New York, where the virus first lurked in wastewater, are urging prudence and experts concurred.
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JOHN TORRES, NBC News Senior Medical Correspondent:
If you're not sure if you're fully vaccinated as a child and you can't find those records, then you should get a polio vaccine now.
Even if you did get them as a child, getting another one now will be safe, it's very effective and it can protect you from polio.
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Thirty-two U.S. states are accepting online requests for polio immunisation records, with other states offering the service by mail.
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