CDC director responds to criticisms of agency’s guidance: ‘This is hard’

Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), responded to criticisms that her agency’s COVID-19 guidance is “confusing,” saying on Sunday that it is “hard” to provide updated recommendations throughout an ongoing pandemic.

Fox News anchor Bret Baier asked Walensky while she appeared on “Fox News Sunday” on her stated goals of restoring trust in the CDC, noting the recent criticisms that have been made regarding the agency’s changing guidelines on quarantining.

“You know, this is hard. We have ever evolving science with an ever evolving variant. And my job is to provide updated guidance in the context of rapidly rising cases. And that is what we’ve done and I’m here to explain it to the American people and I’m committed to continuing to do so and to continuing to improve,” Walensky said.

Baier also asked Walensky what she would say to the hundreds of school districts that have recently closed down in response to the rapidly spreading COVID-19 omicron variant.

“I want to remind people that in the fall of this year, we had a delta surge and we were able to safely keep our children in school before we had pediatric vaccination. Fast forward to now we have pediatric vaccination,” Walensky said.

“Of course, every jurisdiction is going to have to make these decisions locally,” she added. “But what I will say is the most important thing we can do is get our children vaccinated, get our teachers vaccinated, get our teenagers vaccinated and then to practice all of those layers mitigation strategies that have been proven to work.”