NIH’s Jay Bhattacharya will also serve as acting CDC director

Washington — National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya will serve temporarily as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention until President Trump selects a permanent CDC director, two administration officials told CBS News. He will remain in his role as NIH director. 

The move, first reported by The New York Times, is the latest in a period of turmoil for federal health agency leadership. The CDC has been led by an acting director, Jim O’Neill, who was appointed in August. He replaced Senate-confirmed CDC Director Susan Monarez, who was ousted after less than one month in the role. 

Bhattacharya gained his reputation during the COVID-19 pandemic as a vocal critic of the CDC’s response. Deeply opposed to lockdowns and highly skeptical of the effectiveness of masking, Bhattacharya, then a Stanford Medical School professor, took to writing and speaking out on social media. 

The CDC last month scaled back the recommended number of childhood vaccines, sparking alarm from pediatricians and public health experts who worry diseases that have been tamed by scientific advances may roar back with a vengeance. 

Bhattacharya told Congress earlier this month that people should get vaccinated against measles, amid the largest outbreak in the U.S. in decades, and said he hasn’t seen evidence that vaccines cause autism, even as the president and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have added fuel to that theory. 

“I have not seen a study that suggests any single vaccine causes autism,” Bhattacharya told a Senate panel.