President-elect Joe Biden will ask Surgeon General Jerome Adams to resign after Wednesday’s inauguration ceremony, signaling a clean break from the Trump administration’s pandemic response agenda.
Adams will resign from his post after Biden’s swearing-in on Wednesday afternoon, marking a symbolic end to the Trump administration’s pandemic response and vaccine rollout, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday. He will be replaced by Dr. Vivek Murthy, the surgeon general under President Barack Obama, who was dismissed by Trump in the spring of 2017.
Adams, an anesthesiologist from Indiana and a close ally of former Vice President Mike Pence, had become a spokesperson for the administration’s coronavirus response efforts and an inadvertent target for Democrats who accused him of defending the administration’s slip-ups.
He was criticized early on for imploring people to stop buying protective face masks in February, insisting that the limited supply of PPE needed to be left for healthcare workers caring for COVID-19 patients. In July, Adams argued that “there was not a high degree of asymptomatic spread” when he made those statements and cited fears within the White House Coronavirus Task Force that people would hoard the limited supplies.
Biden will announce his pick for acting surgeon general on Wednesday to take the role until Murthy is confirmed by the Senate.
