Bhattacharya, the director of the National Institutes of Health, will also temporarily run the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, according to an administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the appointment had not been made public, Associated Press reported Wednesday.
AP said the change was first reported by The New York Times and then confirmed by the official. It would make Bhattacharya the third person to lead the CDC during President Donald Trump’s second term, with Deputy Health Secretary Jim O’Neill having served as acting CDC director before his reported departure last week.
O’Neill, a former investor, had been overseeing vaccine changes described by AP as part of the Trump administration’s effort to adjust the childhood vaccination schedule. The interim arrangement ends with Bhattacharya stepping in to run the agency while the administration seeks a longer-term CDC leader.
The AP report traced the most recent leadership upheaval to the dismissal of Susan Monarez, a longtime government scientist who had been confirmed by the Senate as CDC director. AP said Monarez was fired last summer less than a month after her confirmation.
In testimony to a Senate committee, Monarez later said her dismissal came after she refused to sign off on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s requested changes to the childhood vaccination schedule without data, AP reported. Kennedy, AP said, is the health secretary who “abruptly fired” Monarez.
AP also described Bhattacharya as a health economist and a Stanford University professor who had been an outspoken critic of government COVID-19 shutdowns and vaccine policies. At the NIH, AP said, he oversees the largest public funder of biomedical research.
At a Senate hearing, Bhattacharya testified that childhood measles vaccination was “the best way to address the measles epidemic in this country,” and he also testified that he’d seen no evidence linking any single vaccine to autism, AP reported. AP said administration officials have said they planned to find a permanent CDC director, a job that requires Senate confirmation.