AILSA CHANG, HOST:
More than 1,400 people have fallen sick with measles in the U.S. this year. There have been numerous foodborne disease outbreaks and continuing controversy over the country's vaccine policies. All the while, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been without a permanent director, though that might soon change as a key deadline draws near. NPR's Pien Huang joins us now to explain. Hi, Pien.
PIEN HUANG, BYLINE: Hey, Ailsa.
CHANG: OK. So it sounds like there's so much for the next CDC director to deal with. What is this key deadline that means the CDC will finally suddenly get a new boss?
HUANG: Yeah. So this is related to a federal law called the Vacancies Act, which puts a limit on how long a Senate-confirmed position can be open. So far, the Trump administration has been filling the spot with one temp after another, but they're running out of time to nominate a new director. So tomorrow, it will be 210 days since the last CDC director, Susan Monarez, was fired back in August, and currently in that role is Dr. Jay Bhattacharya. He's currently pulling double duty as head of both the CDC and the National Institutes of Health. And the law says that if a new candidate is not named by tomorrow, Bhattacharya can't keep being in the acting director role. No one can. So the administration does say that they've been taking the search seriously, and they're trying to wrap it up.
CHANG: OK. So time is up, and it seems like there's been a tough search for just the right candidate, yeah?
HUANG: Yeah. It's been tough. I mean, Chris Klomp, a senior adviser to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., he told STAT News that he's been interviewing dozens of candidates for the role and that Kennedy himself is interviewing the finalists. Here is Klomp talking to STAT.
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CHRIS KLOMP: I want somebody of unassailably high moral integrity, who is deeply experienced and has deep expertise and is qualified to lead a staggeringly complicated and essential government agency. That's a tall order.
HUANG: Now, the candidates might include Ernie Fletcher, who's the former Kentucky governor and Joseph Marine, a cardiologist at Johns Hopkins. That's according to reporting by Bloomberg and The Washington Post. But HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon declined to comment on the potential candidates.
CHANG: OK. But to be confirmed, this nominee needs not only to be aligned with Secretary Kennedy and President Trump, but also needs to get through the Senate, which has not been a smooth ride when it comes to the director of the CDC, right?
HUANG: Yeah. That's true, Ailsa. I mean, last year, Trump's first pick, Dr. Dave Weldon, could not get enough votes because some senators objected to his record opposing vaccines. Now, Susan Monarez was confirmed last summer, but she was fired when she stood up against changes Kennedy wanted to make to vaccine policies. And there's another thing - the top CDC director role pays about $200,000 a year, which is a big pay cut for the types of people that the administration is looking to hire to lead an agency that's really struggling.
CHANG: Struggling - say more. How are things at the CDC right now?
HUANG: So things are a little better now than they were last year. Remember, last year, they lost about a quarter of their staff. A shooter attacked their campus, and big cuts were proposed to their budget, but things are still not great. I mean, morale is very low, and people keep leaving. Some things are starting to go the CDC's way, according to the staffers that I talked with. Earlier this year, their budget got mostly restored by Congress, and last week, a federal judge blocked some vaccine changes that Kennedy had made, which many people at CDC had opposed. And so far, there have been good reviews for Jay Bhattacharya as acting director. Now, he started in this role last month, and so far, he's allowed more telework. He's visited the staff in Atlanta. He's been approving contracts and conferences that have been in limbo for months, and he's holding an all-staff meeting tomorrow. Now, the CDC staff are relieved, but they told me that the bar is so low. They're just excited to do basic things like run programs again after a year of pretty severe dysfunction.
CHANG: That is NPR's Pien Huang. Thank you, Pien.
HUANG: You're welcome, Ailsa. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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