Trump administration moves forward with plan to open new pandemic office as coronavirus crisis intensifies

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Washington (CNN) –– The government of President Donald Trump dissolved the National Security Council's pandemic response office in 2018, and now, on the defensive after a failed response to the coronavirus pandemic, plans to launch a similar office in the State Department.

The US National Security Council (NSC) hosted an inter-agency meeting Thursday to discuss plans for the office, which will be under the leadership of a new position: pandemic coordinator, a senior said administration official.

The goal of Thursday's meeting was to clarify the details and establish a proposal for President Trump to approve, but the drive to start a new office has drawn criticism from health experts and former officials, some of whom question whether this new unit It will be located in the State Department and not the NSC, simply to differentiate itself from the Obama administration's effort.

Officials who had worked on that pandemic response team, the global health and safety and biodefense directorate, lamented the move by the Trump administration to internally destroy the office, a position contested by the White House, arguing that it reassigned staff and streamlined bureaucracy.

"Deja vu"

Ex-officials say the government could have been better prepared for the pandemic if it had left the original office rather than trying to replicate it even as the virus gained new ground. As the United States hit a record Wednesday for the highest count of new infections in a single day, these former officials said having the original unit working "absolutely" would have made a difference in coordinating a faster, more effective response. to the coronavirus pandemic, which has so far claimed the lives of more than 125,000 American lives.

Lisa Monaco, who served as National Security Advisor to President Barack Obama and oversaw the creation of the NSC's global health directorate, told CNN New Day on Thursday that the Trump administration's office is "deja vu."

Meanwhile, health experts say the State Department has a crucial role to play in a response to a pandemic, but the White House must play the key coordinating role. Some raised questions about the potential impact this new office could have on the highly successful programs of the United States Agency for International Development and the possibility that it may drain funds and resources, further damaging global health efforts.

The NSC and the State Department did not respond to a request for comment.

Monaco noted that the Obama administration had deliberately placed leadership within the National Security Council, which takes policy recommendations from government-wide agencies and uses them to advise the president, "because in an epidemic like Ebola, in a pandemic like the covid-19, what you need is a full government response and you need quick action. And you need quick decisions from the president and you need that coordinated policy across the government. ”

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"This move now to set up this unit, reset this unit, albeit in a different building on the one hand, is the recognition that a specific identified location really is needed to constantly focus on the response to the pandemic," Monaco said. "That is good. On the other hand, what we are really seeing here is the risk of repeating mistakes again. ”

He noted that the Trump administration put a new pandemic biodefense and response unit into the Department of Health and Human Services in 2018. When the coronavirus pandemic began to spread, the administration began using a task force under the Secretary of Health and Human Services Alexander Azar. "That didn't work," he said, and the administration eventually took the coordination effort to the White House under Vice President Mike Pence, where a broader and more comprehensive effort is easier to coordinate.

Trump administration officials believe his proposal for a new office should focus on public health, but also diplomacy, the administration's top official told CNN. That's one reason why officials see the State Department as the appropriate place to host the new effort.

There is also support in Congress for this effort, said the official, noting that hosting the office in the State Department means that it will have more longevity and less turnover.

'Leadership gap'

But Monaco argued that putting it in the State Department "doesn't make sense" and health experts also pointed out the shortcomings of that plan.

Steve Morrison, director of the Center for Global Health Policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said it makes sense for the State Department to play a role in a global pandemic, particularly in coordinating support and outreach to low-income countries. . But that is not enough, he added.

"Putting him in the State Department, in theory, is a good thing, but it has to be done next to something in the White House," Morrison told CNN. "The White House is really about taking the government-wide approach and representing the president and restoring the leadership of the White House."

"There is a huge leadership vacuum for this administration in what is happening outside of our borders and this is the time when the administration should wake up and start doing something that is deliberate and very serious," Morrison said. "Restoring leadership in the NSC should be a first prerequisite for moving forward."

Both Morrison and Monaco said the administration was making a serious mistake by withdrawing from the World Health Organization. "This recognition that you need diplomacy. Absolutely, you need diplomacy in a pandemic response, ”said Monaco. "That is one of the reasons why we should not withdraw from the World Health Organization, and the most effective diplomacy can be done by the President and Vice President."

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The Obama administration established the Global Health Directorate in 2015 after the 2014 Ebola epidemic to help coordinate the response and hosted this office in the NSC because of the proximity to the President, and because the interagency process is already going through that organism. “In a health security crisis, speed is essential. When this new coronavirus emerged, there was no clear White House-led structure to monitor our response, and we wasted valuable time, ”Beth Cameron, the former office director, wrote in an opinion column in The Washington Post.

Former National Security Adviser John Bolton ordered the unit to disband in 2018 shortly after taking the job. Unit leader Timothy Ziemer left the administration and other team members were reassigned to other units within the NSC. When the administration was criticized for minimizing the pandemic and mismanaging the response at the national level, Trump denied closing the address and said he knew nothing about it.

Along with the global health directorate, the Obama National Security Council also left the Trump administration a detailed document on how to respond to a pandemic. The strategy book - 40 pages plus appendices - contained step-by-step advice on questions to ask, decisions to be made, and which federal agencies are responsible for what. It explicitly lists new coronaviruses as one of the types of pathogens that may require a significant response.

In addition to the strategy book, outgoing top Obama officials also led an in-person pandemic response exercise for incoming top Trump officials in January 2017, as required by a new law on improving presidential transitions that Obama signed. in 2016.

CNN's Daniel Dale contributed to this report.

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