After leading the White House’s coronavirus pandemic response for the past year, Dr. Ashish Jha is set to leave the Biden administration and return to his previous position as dean of the School of Public Health at Brown University.
President Biden praised Dr. Jha for effectively communicating complex scientific challenges and taking concrete actions to help save and improve the lives of millions of Americans, according to the statement announcing his departure. A senior administration official familiar with the situation said that Dr. Jha will leave the White House on June 15.
Dr. Jha took on the role in April 2022, following Jeffrey D. Zients, who is now the president’s chief of staff, as Mr. Biden’s first Covid coordinator. The departure of Dr. Jha with little fanfare highlights how the health crisis has receded from the daily lives of Americans, despite the continuing toll of the coronavirus on vulnerable parts of the population.
When the pandemic began in 2020, the White House personnel leading the fight against the virus, like Dr. Deborah L. Birx and Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, frequently appeared on television and became household names. Mr. Zients continued doing regular Covid briefings for reporters and the public when Mr. Biden took office, helping to coordinate the distribution of the vaccine and responding to surges of variants that sent cases, deaths, and hospitalizations spiking.
However, by the time Dr. Jha replaced Mr. Zients at the White House, much of the country had begun to move on. Briefings for reporters became infrequent, and Mr. Biden rarely weighed in on the pandemic. In May 2022, the administration ended the public health emergency that had shaped the government’s response to the pandemic since early 2020, closing down the Covid response team that Mr. Biden had assembled at the beginning of his administration, which Dr. Jha has led.
Dr. Jha has delayed his departure while White House officials search for a leader of the new pandemic preparedness office, which will help coordinate the Biden administration’s Covid-19 response, according to a senior administration official. The White House has narrowed that search to around half a dozen candidates, with several of them considered leading candidates; a decision on that position is expected in the coming weeks.
Lisa Barclay, Dr. Jha’s deputy, and Dr. Cyrus Shahpar, the team’s data director, are expected to move to the pandemic office. Additionally, ongoing Covid-19 response efforts will be directed by existing federal public health infrastructure, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response at the Department of Health and Human Services.
White House officials have worked to preserve funding for Project NextGen, a $5 billion Covid-19 vaccine development program led by the Department of Health and Human Services that aims to deliver new vaccine technologies more durable than the booster shots authorized by federal regulators and to examine wastewater for the virus and improve indoor air quality to reduce the spread of the coronavirus.
Federal regulators are expected to authorize another round of booster shots late this summer in an effort to stave off a winter wave of cases.
