Speaker 1: Welcome to Prognosis. I'm Laura Carlton. It's day three one
Speaker 1: since coronavirus was declared a global pandemic. Today's main story.
Speaker 1: The c d c s new director has two tough
Speaker 1: jobs ahead, responding to the pandemic and restoring the organization's
Speaker 1: battered reputation. But first, here's what happened in virus news today.
Speaker 1: Johnson and Johnson's one shot vaccine generated strong protection against
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen in a large, late stage trial. The news
Speaker 1: raises hope that it can rapidly reshape a stumbling immunization campaign.
Speaker 1: In a statement today, the company said that while the
Speaker 1: vaccine was shown to prevent six of moderate to severe
Speaker 1: cases of COVID nineteen, it was particularly effective at keeping
Speaker 1: people from getting severely ill. The shot also prevented one
Speaker 1: of hospitalizations and deaths. J and J will deliver about
Speaker 1: two million doses of its COVID nineteen vaccine when it
Speaker 1: receives an emergency use authorization in the US. That's according
Speaker 1: to a government accountability report published yesterday. J and J
Speaker 1: plans to file with the U S Food and Drug
Speaker 1: Administration for that authorization next week. The European Union's Drug
Speaker 1: Regulator cleared a COVID nineteen vaccine from Astra Zenica and
Speaker 1: the University of Oxford for all adults today. A shortfall
Speaker 1: and expected deliveries has raised tensions between the company and
Speaker 1: the block. The Astra Oxford vaccine will be the third
Speaker 1: available in the EU after shots from Fiser and modern Up,
Speaker 1: and it could help alleviate the shortage of shots in
Speaker 1: the region. The EU currently trails the UK and the
Speaker 1: US in vaccinations. Finally, the spread of a new UK
Speaker 1: strain of COVID nineteen stabilized or fell in most British regions,
Speaker 1: with the country under a severe lockdown. That's even as
Speaker 1: overall caseloads remained high. The news suggests the UK's restrictions
Speaker 1: have helped arrest transmission of a strain officials have warned
Speaker 1: is more deadly and easier to spread. And now for
Speaker 1: today's main story for SHELL, Will Lensky, the new leader
Speaker 1: of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, faces two
Speaker 1: difficult missions at the same time, leading the agency's COVID
Speaker 1: nineteen response and trying to restore the agency's stature post Trump,
Speaker 1: I spoke with John Tazzi about the job ahead for
Speaker 1: Wilenski and how she plans to achieve it. President Biden
Speaker 1: recently tapped Dr Rochelle Wilenski to be the new leader
Speaker 1: of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. I'm just wondering,
Speaker 1: you know, what do we know about her? What's her background? Sure?
Speaker 1: Rachelle Wilenski is most recently was chief of Infectious Diseases
Speaker 1: at Massachusetts General Hospital, prestigious hospital in Boston. She's a
Speaker 1: professor at Harvard and basically has spent a career in
Speaker 1: infectious disease care and research. She's done a lot of
Speaker 1: work on HIV and AIDS and has advised national and
Speaker 1: international organizations on HIV policy. UM So she's a well
Speaker 1: respected and high profile infectious disease for position. And you know,
Speaker 1: before going to c DC, she was actually treating patients
Speaker 1: with COVID nineteen in in the hospital over the past year.
Speaker 1: You know, what were some of the factors that led
Speaker 1: the Biden administration to select her for this role. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's an interesting choice because she's not someone who's had um,
Speaker 1: you know, leadership roles in public health before. Um you know,
Speaker 1: she hasn't run a city or state Health Department. She
Speaker 1: hasn't worked at c d C, but we know from
Speaker 1: reporting that she came highly recommended by a number of people,
Speaker 1: including Dr Anthony Faucci, who, um, you know, it's obviously
Speaker 1: a Biden advisor and top infectious disease official in the US.
Speaker 1: So I think you know, from from what we've heard,
Speaker 1: that fact she's sort of endorsement of Wilenski was an
Speaker 1: important part of um, you know how she was chosen
Speaker 1: for this position. You know, Dr Wilenski is stepping into
Speaker 1: the leadership of this agency at a very troubling time.
Speaker 1: You know, what are some of the big challenges and
Speaker 1: issues she's going to be facing in her first few
Speaker 1: weeks in the role. Yeah, I think it's really twofold. First,
Speaker 1: there's obviously the COVID nineteen pandemic and trying to jump
Speaker 1: into the US response, uh and really shift the response
Speaker 1: in a different direction with a greater role for the
Speaker 1: federal government under the Biden administration. Part of what face
Speaker 1: confronting is new variants of the virus that are emerging
Speaker 1: that the CDC is trying to monitor and understand. She's
Speaker 1: also facing the vaccine rollout, you know, so all these
Speaker 1: sort of things in progress UM operationally that the CDC
Speaker 1: has to respond to the second part of it, UM,
Speaker 1: which is maybe as challenging or more, is that the
Speaker 1: CDC as an institution has really been diminished over the
Speaker 1: past year. They were often not at the kind of
Speaker 1: forefront of the public response in the Trump administration. Their
Speaker 1: briefings basically ceased very early into the pandemic in the US,
Speaker 1: you know, and there was a lot of reporting about
Speaker 1: how really political considerations interfered with their operations, and I
Speaker 1: think so there's been a sort of a crisis of
Speaker 1: um credibility of just visibility really at the c d C,
Speaker 1: where this you know, renowned institution worldwide for public health
Speaker 1: sort of suffered in some ways during during the response
Speaker 1: to the pandemic that was so severe in the US.
Speaker 1: We should also mention that, you know, the CDC did
Speaker 1: make some mistakes in in the response UM, you know,
Speaker 1: and most notably very early on, there were problems with
Speaker 1: the test kids used to detect the coronavirus in the
Speaker 1: US that sort of blind decided the whole country. We
Speaker 1: didn't have enough testing early on to understand how the
Speaker 1: virus was spread, and you know, some people we talked to,
Speaker 1: including the former director of the CDC under President Obama,
Speaker 1: have called for, you know, an assessment and accounting for
Speaker 1: what happened and how that happened. So has Dr Lensky
Speaker 1: given an indication about how she might go about trying
Speaker 1: to get this agency's reputation, particularly with regard to COVID
Speaker 1: nineteen and the rollout in the US. How can she
Speaker 1: get the CDC back on track. I think what she
Speaker 1: has said, and you know, it's consistent with what the
Speaker 1: Biden administration has said broadly, is that they're going to let,
Speaker 1: you know, let the science and the facts speak and
Speaker 1: kind of be able to showcase the work of the
Speaker 1: career scientists at CDC um to make sure that those
Speaker 1: folks and their research are getting to the public, that
Speaker 1: federal messaging around the c d C S guidance is
Speaker 1: prominent and clear. And you know, one of the first
Speaker 1: things she did on the day she took office when
Speaker 1: Biden was inaugurated, was to order a review of existing
Speaker 1: CDC guidance on COVID nineteen and to sort of assess
Speaker 1: what the agency has put out already and you know,
Speaker 1: revise it if if appropriate. So you know, that's UM.
Speaker 1: I think it's it's too early to kind of have
Speaker 1: a good sense of exactly what changes we might see,
Speaker 1: but one of them certainly is, UM, you know, just
Speaker 1: a higher profile for for the agency broadly and going
Speaker 1: forward with that, you know, under the Biden administration, what
Speaker 1: will be or what can we expect to see as
Speaker 1: far as the CDC in terms of perhaps new roles
Speaker 1: or responsibilities that might differ from what we saw the
Speaker 1: agency doing under say, the Trump administration. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: good question, UM, and I think you know, a big
Speaker 1: part of it will be that kind of broader public
Speaker 1: profile for the agency, for the director for career scientists.
Speaker 1: You know, there are some specific things that Biden has
Speaker 1: indicated he wants the CDC to do in the COVID
Speaker 1: National Strategy that the President released early on. You know,
Speaker 1: it's supposed to help expand testing with a sort of
Speaker 1: testing support teams that will work in schools and potentially
Speaker 1: other settings. It's going to create a testing plan for
Speaker 1: the federal workforce. It's going to kind of update its
Speaker 1: guidance and UM help you know, different UH stakeholders in
Speaker 1: industry or in you know, states or other communities really
Speaker 1: be able to monitor the spread of COVID and kind
Speaker 1: of understand when you know, how to spawned if the
Speaker 1: virus is increasing or kind of really metrics driven guidance
Speaker 1: is what they've focused. I think there's also, you know,
Speaker 1: a big equity component that the agency is taking on
Speaker 1: in terms of addressing COVID's impact in communities of color
Speaker 1: or invulnerable communities, and particularly with the vaccine roll out
Speaker 1: um you know, making sure that those communities are being
Speaker 1: considered and being reached. So, you know, there's a lot
Speaker 1: on the agency's plate. I think it's still pretty early
Speaker 1: to understand exactly what role it will take further along
Speaker 1: in the Biden administration. That was John Tozzi, and that's
Speaker 1: it for our show today. For coverage of the outbreak
Speaker 1: from one bureaus around the world, visit Bloomberg dot com
Speaker 1: slash coronavirus and if you like the show, please leave
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Speaker 1: It's the best way to help more listeners find our
Speaker 1: global recording. The Prognosis Daily edition is produced by Top
Speaker 1: foreheads Magnus Henrickson and me Laura Carlson. Today's main story
Speaker 1: was reported by John Tozzi. Original music by Leo Sidrin.
Speaker 1: Our editors are Rick Shine and Francesco Levi. Francesco Levi
Speaker 1: is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. Thanks for listening.