The mayor had been faulted by public health experts, including some within the Health Department, for not moving faster to close down schools and businesses in March, when New York emerged as an epicentre of the pandemic. Public health officials have bristled at the mayor’s decision to strip the Health Department of its responsibility for contact tracing and give it instead to the public hospital system, known as Health + Hospitals. She’s a very qualified commissioner of health,” said Lilliam Barrios-Paoli, a former deputy mayor of health under de Blasio who worked with Barbot. It’s the premier public health agency in the country,” Barrios-Paoli added. But Barbot, a public health expert who had led the department since 2018, did not publicly raise objections to the move.

Source: bd News24 August 04, 2020 18:11 UTC