Dr. Ashish Jha is the new White House COVID response coordinator
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President Joe Biden named Dr. Ashish Jha, a well-known public health expert who is the dean of Brown University's School of Public Health, as his new White House COVID-19 response coordinator.
Jha replaces Jeff Zients, a management consultant and former top economic adviser to President Barack Obama. Zients led the Biden administration's efforts to ramp up vaccinations, testing and treatments from the time the president first took office.
Jha, a ubiquitous media presence who had advised the White House on its most recent COVID plan, is a "wise and calming public presence," Biden said in a statement.
The shift comes as the administration moves into a new phase of its pandemic response, one that seeks to get more things back to normal after two years of crisis, while staying vigilant for new variants and outbreaks.
That plan hit a road bump when the White House asked Congress for more emergency spending to pay for it. Congress has thus far declined, and the White House has said it needs to scale back its efforts.
The White House said it will start to wind down a COVID-19 program that pays to test, treat and vaccinate people who don't have health insurance, and had to step back from plans to place another order for monoclonal antibody treatments.
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