State and local public health agencies are calling on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to take more active steps to correct the failures of the COVID-19 pandemic, which they say could require more investment from the Biden administration and Congress.
“The company will have to act temporarily to repair its position as the nation’s premier public fitness lab, in time to meet the changing needs of public fitness,” three senior officials at the Association of Public Health Laboratories wrote in an op-ed published Monday in Scientific American. .
The APHL represents state and local government fitness laboratories throughout the United States and includes public fitness, agricultural, and environmental testing facilities. Jill Taylor, APHL’s senior advisor for clinical affairs and a member of the CDC’s Laboratory Advisory Committee, wrote the article with Ewa King and Scott Becker, respectively program director and executive director of the nonpartisan group.
The authors, in particular, point to the CDC’s early mistakes in generating accurate diagnostic tests for COVID-19, bringing out the agency’s “only we can do it” approach, without the expertise of state and local agencies.
In 2023, CDC took steps to release the Laboratory Systems and Response Center, which is responsible for coordinating CDC’s 40 diagnostic laboratories and collaborating with private and educational institutions, as well as diagnostic test manufacturers. This was announced as part of the agency’s “Moving Forward” to address similar COVID-19 failures.
The center, however, is still indexed in the CDC’s organizational chart, according to the APHL edition, and says the company “needs to act faster to demonstrate the importance of this organizational change. “
The authors also criticized the CDC for not cooperating more temporarily with state and local agencies, saying the company wants to see itself “as the center of a wheel rather than the most sensitive in a pyramid. “
“In the past, the CDC had perceived itself as the most sensible part of a pyramid in which lower-level labs had reduced degrees of complexity and capacity,” wrote the APHL authors, who said the company is slowly beginning to collaborate more. with state agencies at the national level and the personal sector.
Taylor, King, and Becker wrote that despite these problem areas, the agency needs greater funding from Congress to strengthen its own laboratory facilities.
“CDC’s testing laboratories have traditionally lacked sufficient levels and resources consistent with the agency’s duty as the nation’s primary public fitness laboratory,” they wrote.
The authors also said few CDC scientists are federally qualified to be laboratory administrators for highly complex testing facilities, which require a degree in laboratory science.
They also said that those in lab positions at the CDC “report to senior health professionals who lack the specific education and training needed to oversee essential laboratory quality and performance standards.”
“Ensuring that the company receives levels of federal investment commensurate with the scope of its day-to-day work is a success,” they write.
However, it remains unlikely to receive bipartisan support from Congress for further investment, as tensions between the GOP and the CDC have only increased since the pandemic.
House Republicans have subpoenaed the Department of Health and Human Services several times during this legislative session, including for information regarding the agency’s earliest knowledge of COVID-19, and have faced continued stonewalling tactics.
Last summer, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) introduced a measure to subject the director of the CDC to Senate confirmation, as well as the director of the National Institutes of Health, to oversight. Other Republican senators have expressed frustration with the CDC’s political correctness, for example. For example, by using the word “breastfeeding” on your breastfeeding recommendations page.
Taylor, King, and Becker, however, argued that looming public health threats, such as the syphilis epidemic and domestic malaria, demand greater oversight and funding for the CDC.
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“The next risk is probably imminent and as a country we will have to do better,” the authors write.
Neither the CDC nor HHS responded to the Washington Examiner’s requests for comment.