When infectious pathogens have threatened the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been front and center. During the H1N1 flu of 2009, the Ebola crisis in 2014 and the mosquito-borne outbreak of Zika in 2015, the CDC has led the federal response.
Yet the nation’s public health agency, with its distinguished history of successfully fighting scourges such as polio and smallpox, has been conspicuously absent in recent weeks as infections and deaths from the new coronavirus soared in the U.S.
President Trump has been holding almost daily press conferences at the White House, but the primary health advisers at his side are not from the CDC. Dr. Anthony Fauci directs the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which focuses on biomedical research, and Dr. Deborah Birx is the global AIDS coordinator for the State Department.
The public has heard much less from the CDC director, Dr. Robert Redfield, and the agency, based in Atlanta, has not held a media briefing since March 9.
On Monday, Redfield agreed to a phone interview with Sam Whitehead, the health reporter at WABE in Atlanta, where he also hosts a coronavirus podcast.
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