Democrat President Joe Biden’s newly appointed director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has said that she expects Americans to “get your annual Covid shot.” Dr. Mandy Cohen said she’s pushing for mRNA Covid injections to become an annual inoculation like the flu shot.
During the interview with Spectrum News, Cohen was asked if the United States is at a point where Americans should get “booster” shots for Covid every year.
Cohen responded, “We’re just on the precipice of that, so I don’t want to get ahead of where our scientists are here and doing that evaluation work, but yes, we anticipate that Covid will become similar to flu shots, where it is going to be you get your annual flu shot and you get your annual Covid shot.”
“That’s where we’re going to,” she continued.
“We’re not quite there yet,” added Cohen, the previous secretary of health and human services in North Carolina.
Official guidance from the U.S. health agency regarding an annual Covid shot should arrive in early or mid-September, the CDC director said.
Cohen, a Democrat, said she expects Big Pharma companies to produce a new Covid booster by the fall.
During Cohen’s interview, the subject of trust in public health agencies plummeting during the COVID-19 pandemic was broached.
In March, a Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health survey found that approximately a quarter of Americans have little-to-no trust in the CDC for health information.
Cohen told Spectrum News, “While we saw trust go down in lots of institutions, we actually saw trust increase in North Carolina.
“We measured trust in the Department of Health and Human Services and saw that increase.”
“We still had respectful disagreement, but at least we’re having a respectful conversation about how to approach hard, hard topics,” she added.
When asked if the CDC could have done things differently during the pandemic, she replied, “There were some early places where the CDC didn’t perform and execute in the way they needed to.”
Cohen said she is “very” concerned about distrust regarding experimental vaccines.
“I’m very worried about parents not vaccinating kids,” she said.
Cohen also weighed in on the topic of proposed cuts to the CDC budget.
“Just like we have a military to protect us here and around the world, we need a CDC that can protect us,” she said.
“We can’t see those cuts and have the national security assets we need here at the CDC.”
Cohen became the CDC director earlier this month following the departure of her predecessor Dr. Rochelle Walensky.
Earlier this month, Cohen told NBC News the CDC needs to have “an everyday, tactical plan” to “bring the best evidence that we possibly can” to the public.
She admitted that the CDC had lost trust during the pandemic.
However, she promised transparency at the health agency under her watch.
“You’re going to hear us with some key messages, making sure that folks hear them over and over,” Cohen added.
NBC News said Cohen’s team in North Carolina “sometimes turned to faith leaders, NASCAR drivers, even TikTok influencers to get scientific information to the public.”
“But she works hard to focus instead on re-infusing a spark back into the work done at the CDC,” the outlet said of Cohen.
“On her first day, she played Alicia Keys and other music in the lobby to greet her new co-workers.”
