The president’s choice for the job, Dr. Mandy Cohen, would replace Dr. Rochelle Walensky, who is stepping down at the end of the month.President Biden plans to name Dr. Mandy Cohen, a former North Carolina health secretary who steered her state through the tumultuous first two years of the coronavirus pandemic, as the next director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, according to two people familiar with the selection process.The selection of Dr. Cohen, which was first reported by The Washington Post, is not final. The White House is still putting together the necessary paperwork to make the appointment official, according to another person familiar with the selection process. But Dr. Cohen is the leading candidate, this person said.The White House declined to comment. Dr. Cohen did not immediately respond to a request for comment.If chosen by Mr. Biden, Dr. Cohen, an internist, would replace Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, an infectious disease expert who announced last month that she would step down at the end of June. Dr. Walensky led the C.D.C. through difficult times; the agency had grown demoralized under President Donald J. Trump and drew fierce criticism under both Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden.As secretary of North Carolina’s Department of Health and Human Services under Gov. Roy Cooper from 2017 to 2021, Dr. Cohen established herself as a familiar and steady voice who maintained the public’s trust despite deep political divisions, people who worked with her said.Addressing graduating students at Guilford College in North Carolina last month, Dr. Cohen made trust the theme of her commencement speech. “Change happens at the pace of trust,” she said, adding that while it was possible to motivate people to change their behavior by scaring them, “fear will only get you so far.”One point in Dr. Cohen’s favor is that, unlike Dr. Walensky, she has previous experience in the federal government. Before becoming North Carolina’s health secretary, she held several posts in the Obama administration, including serving as chief operating officer and chief of staff at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Dr. Cohen is currently an executive at Aledade, a company that offers support to physicians and community health clinics.Although Congress passed legislation last year requiring that the C.D.C. director be subject to Senate confirmation, the provision does not take effect until 2025, so Dr. Cohen could begin serving right away.“Mandy Cohen used a steady hand to help my administration lead North Carolina through the pandemic to be among the states with the lowest deaths and job losses per capita,” Mr. Cooper, a Democrat, said in a statement. “She is a brilliant, talented and battle-tested leader who would be a fantastic C.D.C. director.”Public health experts who know Dr. Cohen or have worked with her said her experience leading North Carolina’s pandemic response and her years at federal agencies would be a tremendous asset for a C.D.C. director. The C.D.C. has repeatedly come under fire during the pandemic for its muddled messaging, but Dr. Cohen drew praise as a clear communicator.“North Carolina is a purple state, which is relevant when, you know, we were in a public health emergency that was extremely politicized,” said Dr. Neel Shah, the chief medical officer of Maven Clinic, a digital health care provider, who has known Dr. Cohen since they were both medical residents at Massachusetts General Hospital. He said Dr. Cohen “did an outstanding job of having an impact in that kind of climate.”In the public health community, Dr. Cohen has a reputation for creating innovative programs, including a workaround to allow state governments to use Medicaid dollars to help low-income people with housing, food security and other needs that can affect their health.“People talk about North Carolina with a measure of excitement in their voice,” said Dr. Joshua M. Sharfstein, the vice dean for public health practice and community engagement at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, who worked closely with Dr. Cohen when he was Maryland’s health secretary and she was a federal official.The pandemic revealed a deep rift between public health and medicine, and Dr. Cohen is trying to bridge that divide, in part by having primary care physicians deliver preventive care, Dr. Sharfstein said.“There’s a lot of opportunity at the intersection of health care and public health, and C.D.C. has not really been able to take advantage of those opportunities,” he said.

The designation will free up emergency funds and lift some bureaucratic hurdles, but many experts fear containment may no longer be possible.WASHINGTON — The Biden administration on Thursday declared the growing monkeypox outbreak a national health emergency, a rare designation signaling that the virus now represents a significant risk to Americans and setting in motion new measures aimed at containing the threat.The declaration by Xavier Becerra, President Biden’s health secretary, marks just the fifth such national emergency since 2001, and comes as the country remains in a state of emergency over the coronavirus pandemic. The World Health Organization declared a global health emergency over the outbreak late last month.Mr. Becerra’s announcement, at an afternoon news briefing where he was joined by a raft of other top health officials, gives federal agencies power to quickly direct money toward developing and evaluating vaccines and drugs, to gain access to emergency funding and to hire additional workers to help manage the outbreak, which began in May.“We’re prepared to take our response to the next level in addressing this virus,” Mr. Becerra said, adding that “we urge every American to take monkeypox seriously, and to take responsibility to help us tackle this virus.”Mr. Biden has faced intense pressure from public health experts and activists to move more aggressively to combat monkeypox, which has infected more than 6,600 people in the United States. Lawrence O. Gostin, a health law expert at Georgetown University, called Thursday’s declaration “a pivotal turning point in the monkeypox response, after a lackluster start.”Supplies of the monkeypox vaccine, called Jynneos, have been severely constrained, and the administration has been criticized for moving too slowly to expand the number of doses. Less than a decade ago, the United States had 20 million Jynneos doses; by May, the vast majority of them had expired.In echoes of the early coronavirus response, tests have been difficult to obtain, surveillance has been spotty and it has been challenging to get an accurate count of cases. The administration has also been faulted for not doing enough to educate people in the L.G.B.T.Q. community, who are at high risk, before gay pride celebrations in June.“We have 5 percent of the world’s population and 25 percent of the world’s cases,” said Dr. Carlos del Rio, an infectious disease physician at Emory University in Atlanta. “That, to me, honestly, is a failure. We were caught sleeping at the wheel.”To address the vaccine shortage, Dr. Robert Califf, the Food and Drug Administration commissioner, who joined Mr. Becerra on Thursday, said his agency was exploring a strategy that would expand the number of available Jynneos doses by administering the shots differently — into layers of the skin, rather than the fat underneath. If it works, one-fifth of the current dose could be used to protect against the virus.Dr. Califf said the agency was optimistic about the idea and expected to make a final decision “within the next few days,” adding, “It’s important to note that overall safety and efficacy profile will not be sacrificed for this approach.”What to Know About the Monkeypox VirusCard 1 of 7What is monkeypox?