By Ahmed Aboulenein
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Senate voted on Tuesday night 51-47 along party lines to confirm President Donald Trump’s nominee, Susan Monarez, as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, charged with leading the response to threats against public health.
Monarez, a career public health official who served as acting director of the CDC until her nomination, will report to Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has long questioned the safety of vaccines, contrary to scientific evidence, including suggesting a link between them and autism.
The first CDC director to require Senate confirmation following amendments to the Public Health Service Act, Monarez sought to distance herself somewhat from some of Kennedy’s views during her confirmation hearing last month, while also praising his leadership on multiple occasions.
She told a Senate committee last month that she had not seen evidence linking vaccines and autism, and promised to prioritize vaccine availability if confirmed.
Monarez, the first CDC director without a medical degree since 1953, holds a PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research focused on developing technologies to diagnose, treat and prevent infectious diseases.
She is the Trump administration’s second nominee for the role. In March, the president withdrew his nomination of former Republican congressman and vaccine critic Dave Weldon, a Kennedy ally, just hours before his scheduled confirmation hearing.
The United States is facing a growing measles outbreak, with confirmed cases this month reaching the highest level since the disease was declared eliminated from the country in 2000. Monarez is expected to lead the response to the outbreak, and play a critical role in tackling the spread of bird flu.
Monarez will lead a diminished agency, with the White House seeking to cut the CDC’s budget by almost $3.6 billion, leaving it with a $4 billion budget, and Kennedy enacting a layoff plan that cut 2,400 employees, though some 700 were rehired.
Kennedy has also made major decisions on vaccines in the absence of a CDC director. It is unclear if he will continue to do so.
He fired all members of the CDC’s vaccine expert panel, which recommends how vaccines are used and by whom, last month, and replaced them with hand-picked advisers including anti-vaccine activists.
Kennedy also announced in May that the U.S. would stop recommending routine COVID vaccinations for pregnant women and healthy children, bypassing the CDC’s traditional process.
The Atlanta-based CDC tracks and responds to domestic and foreign threats to public health. Roughly two-thirds of its budget provides funds to the public health and prevention activities of state and local health agencies.
(Reporting by Ahmed Aboulenein in Washington; Editing by Matthew Lewis)
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