Dr. White House Covid Coordinator Ashish Jha is leaving this month
Dr. Ashish Jha, who spent the past year coordinating the White House’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, will leave the Biden administration and return to his previous position as dean of the School of Public Health at Brown University.
In a statement announcing Dr. Jha’s departure, Mr. Biden praised him for “effectively translating and communicating complex scientific challenges into concrete actions that helped save and improve the lives of millions of Americans.”
Dr. Jha plans to leave the White House on June 15, according to a senior official familiar with the timing.
Mr Jha joined the government in April 2022 as the United States and the rest of the world emerged from the worst effects of the pandemic. He replaced Jeffrey D. Zients, Mr. Biden’s first covid coordinator, who is now the president’s chief of staff.
His departure with little fanfare underscores just how much the health crisis has receded from Americans’ everyday lives, despite the ongoing toll of the coronavirus on vulnerable segments of the population, including older adults.
When the pandemic began during the last year of Donald J. Trump’s presidency, White House staff leading the fight against the virus — like Dr. Deborah L. Birx and Dr. Anthony S. Fauci – often on television and became household names.
Mr Zients continued to give regular Covid briefings to reporters and the public when Mr Biden took office, helping to coordinate distribution of the vaccine and respond to the wave of variants that spiked cases, deaths and hospitalizations.
Dr. Jha was known as a frequent contributor to cable news during that period. But by the time he replaced Mr. Zients in the White House, much of the country had left. Briefings for reporters became rare and Mr Biden rarely weighed in on the pandemic.
Last month, the government formally ended the public health emergency that has shaped the government’s response to the pandemic since the beginning of 2020. The White House is also now shutting down the Covid response team Mr Biden assembled at the start of his administration, which Dr. Jha led.
Dr. Jha had delayed his departure while White House officials searched for a leader of a new pandemic agency, which will help coordinate the Biden administration’s Covid-19 response, a senior administration official said. The White House has narrowed that search down to about half a dozen people, several of whom are considered leading candidates, the official added. A decision on that position is expected in the coming weeks.
Some senior advisers to the current White House Covid-19 team, including Lisa Barclay, Dr. Jah, and Dr. Cyrus Shahpar, the team’s data director, are expected to move to the pandemic office.
The ongoing Covid-19 response will also be driven by existing federal public health infrastructure, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response.
White House officials had been working in recent weeks to keep funding clear for one of Dr. Jha, the Covid-19 vaccine development program known as Project NextGen. Led by the Department of Health and Human Services, the $5 billion program aims to deliver new vaccine technologies that are more sustainable than the booster shots that federal regulators have approved.
Federal regulators are expected to approve another round of booster shots late this summer in an effort to stave off a winter surge of cases.
Dr. Jha had also been trying to research and accelerate federal efforts to research and accelerate wastewater for the virus improve indoor air quality to reduce the spread of the coronavirus.