Rochelle Walensky to step down as CDC chief

Rochelle Walensky, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, announced she will resign on June 30,  saying the waning of the COVID-19 pandemic was a good time to make a transition.

Walensky, 54, has been the agency's director for a little over two years. Her resignation announcement comes as the federal COVID-19 public health emergency will come to an end May 11. 

She was previously an infectious-diseases specialist at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital before her appointment by President Joe Biden.

During her time at the CDC, she started a center for forecasting and outbreak analytics and took steps to modernize data collection and analysis. Last year, she began a reorganization designed to make the agency more nimble and to improve its communications with the public.

The World Health Organization said Friday that COVID-19 no longer qualifies as a global emergency, and the U.S. public health emergency will expire next week. Deaths in the U.S. are at their lowest point since the earliest days of the coronavirus outbreak in early 2020.

The CDC, with a $12 billion budget and more than 12,000 employees. is an Atlanta-based federal agency charged with protecting Americans from disease outbreaks and other public health threats.