Tag: CDC

After more than two years of a bungled U.S. COVID response, the CDC is acknowledging its mistakes and pledging to improve. “In our big moment, our performance did not reliably meet expectations,” said agency director Dr. Rochelle Walensky on Aug. 17. She promised a new agency culture with a stronger focus on action for public health.

The head of the nation’s top public health agency on Wednesday announced a shake-up of the organization, saying it fell short responding to COVID-19 and needs to become more nimble.

Black Americans would be particularly vulnerable to a new, aggressive coronavirus variant, the NIH’s Dr. Anthony Fauci told The Root. “The rate of hospitalization and the death rate … is clearly higher, greater in brown and Black populations in the United States compared to the general population and compared to whites,” Fauci told reporter Keith Reid.

European and American health authorities have identified a number of monkeypox cases in recent days, mostly in young men. It’s a surprising outbreak of a disease that rarely appears outside Africa.

Kids ages 5 to 11 should get a booster dose of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine, advisers to the U.S. government said Thursday. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention quickly adopted the panel’s recommendation, opening a third COVID-19 shot to healthy elementary-age kids — just like what is already recommended for everybody 12 and older.