Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary\u00a0Xavier Becerra\u00a0is under fire for what critics say is a lack of leadership as the Biden administration wrestles with the direction of its COVID-19 response.<\/p>\n
Tasked with running the sprawling agency primarily responsible for responding to the COVID-19 pandemic as well as the day-to-day administration of the nation\u2019s unwieldy health system, Becerra is supposed to corral the differing health factions into a unified message on the pandemic.<\/p>\n
But outside health experts and former officials said he\u2019s taken a back seat, ceding his authority to others, including the White House and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).<\/p>\n
\u201cOf all the HHS secretaries we\u2019ve had, at least in the last multiple administrations, we\u2019ve never had one that was a ghost when it came to a public health crisis. That\u2019s what we have now: an invisible HHS secretary. Just when we need that person the most,\u201d said Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute.<\/p>\n
Becerra\u2019s spokesperson, Sarah\u00a0Lovenheim, the assistant secretary for public affairs, disputed the assertion that Becerra has not been a leader during the pandemic.<\/p>\n
The secretary is \u201ctackling a wealth of issues, with COVID being the focus,\u201d\u00a0Lovenheim\u00a0said. \u201cThe secretary drives agency operations to support carrying out the mission, whether he\u2019s coordinating our agencies to make booster doses accessible, authorizing the distribution of vaccines, or determining how to get masks in the hands of people in need of them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary\u00a0Xavier...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health","category-u-s-a"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44143"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44143\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44144,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44143\/revisions\/44144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}