justthenews | Dr. Sonia Angell, California's director of the Department of Public
Health, abruptly resigned on Sunday. Angell, who had been in the
position for less than a year, reportedly resigned via an email sent to
the California Health and Human Services Agency.
Angell has, among others, been leading the state's battle against the
novel coronavirus. More than 10,000 Californians have died of the
illness, and most of the state remains on shutdown following a brief
reopening period in early summer.
"Our department has been front and center in what has become an
all-of-government response of unprecedented proportions to COVID-19. In
the final calculation, all of our work, in aggregate, makes the
difference," Angell reportedly wrote in her resignation letter.
Angell's departure comes as the state government reckons with a data
glitch that failed to log nearly 300,000 infectious disease
testing records, resulting in hindered decision-making at the highest
levels of the California government.
The secretary of California Health and Human Services, Mark Ghaly,
recently apologized to state residents for the error. "Bottom line, our
data system failed," said Ghaly. With more than half a million
reported cases of the virus, California tops the nation for positive
diagnoses. The data blunder, however, has impeded state authorities'
ability to determine policies moving forward, specifically the decision
on whether to reopen schools for in-person learning as the new school
year is set to begin.
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