Leading US health official steps down

The White House has announced the departure of Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Walensky had been a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School since 2012 and was best known for developing vaccination strategies for “underserved communities” and AIDS research at the National Institutes of Health. She helped implement Biden’s Covid-19 strategy of imposing mask and vaccine mandates, which proved both unpopular and largely ineffective. In October 2022, she tested positive for the coronavirus, just a month after receiving a booster shot. After undergoing treatment with Pfizer’s antiviral drug Paxlovid, she tested positive again.