George Gao Fu, the head of China’s Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), is stepping down from his position leading the institution and will be replaced by Shen Hongbing, a prominent public health expert, the CDC has announced.
In a statement, the CDC attributed the 60-year-old Gao’s retirement to his age, even though many Chinese officials stay in office well into their 60s and even beyond. His successor Shen is only two years his junior.
A top health official on Tuesday said he hoped the centre’s new leadership would bring about “reforms” at the institution, including a closer adherence to President Xi Jinping’s directives.
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During a meeting of CDC officials on Tuesday, Gao said that “as someone working in the sciences, [he] would continue to devote energy to the advancement of disease control and the development of public health” even after his departure.
Wang Hesheng, China’s top official for infectious disease control, was quoted by the CDC’s readout of the meeting as praising Gao for his contributions to public health, including his “leadership of all the centre’s staff during the coronavirus pandemic response”. Gao’s tenure as CDC chief began in 2017.
Shen, Gao’s successor, is a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and a former president of Nanjing Medical University.
Wang, who serves as vice-minister of the National Health Commission, said he hoped that Shen, along with several other newly appointed officials at the CDC, would “lead the [CDC’s] expansive body of workers in furthering the reform and development of the CDC”.
Among Wang’s hopes for such reforms was that the CDC would “have a clear-cut stance on politics, comprehensively strengthen the [Chinese Communist] Party’s leadership [of the CDC] ... and implement General Secretary Xi Jinping’s major directives and instructions to the letter.”
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The leadership overhaul at the CDC comes as China continues to grapple with low vaccination rates among its elderly population, while implementing a zero-Covid strategy that included a stringent lockdown of Shanghai earlier this year.
Only 61 per cent of those aged above 80 have received their primary vaccinations, health officials said last week, and only 38 per cent of people in that age group have received a booster shot.
Gao caused a stir last April when he said China was considering mixing different vaccines or changing the number or frequency of vaccine doses “to solve the problem that the efficacy of its existing vaccines is not high”.
The noted virologist later told state-run tabloid Global Times his comments had been misunderstood and that he was referring to efforts to improve the efficacy of vaccines worldwide.
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To date, China has relied mostly on two inactivated-virus vaccines: one made by Sinovac and another by Sinopharm. A home-grown mRNA vaccine, which could offer a higher form of protection, is in development but is yet to be approved.
As US-China relations languish at one of their lowest points in decades, Gao has also stood apart from many Chinese officials in advocating for increased cooperation between the two powers on global health issues.
Whereas some senior diplomats in Beijing have warned that Washington should not expect China’s cooperation in certain areas while tensions remain in others, Gao last year appealed for a bilateral effort to both identify the origins of Covid-19 and accelerate vaccine development.
Gao, a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, also said the US and China should look at cooperating on public health as an opportunity to reset the bilateral relationship.
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The Oxford and Harvard-trained scientist is a long-time friend of Anthony Fauci, the US infectious disease expert who quickly became one of the country’s most trusted voices on the pandemic and serves as the chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden.
As Fauci’s advocacy for a strong pandemic response by the US government drew vocal opposition from supporters of then-President Donald Trump, Gao reached out to him in April 2020 to offer his support.
“I saw some news (hope it is fake) that [you] are being attacked by some people. Hope you are well under such [an] irrational situation,” Gao wrote in an email exchange obtained by The Washington Post.
“Thank you for your kind note,” Fauci replied. “All is well despite some crazy people in this world.”
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