Second in NiH command that the agency directed during Covid resignation

No. 2 in command of the National Health Institutes (NIH), Dr. Lawrence A. Tabak, who served as an interim director of the agency during the Covid-19 pandemic, has renounced abruptly.

Tabak, 73, has been in the NIF for 25 years, for the first time as director of the National Institute for Dental and Craneofacial Research before finally becoming the deputy director of the NIH in 2010, which is the second in command of the agency . Tabak also served during transition periods as an interim director, even during the Covid era, when the Republicans questioned him regularly, together with Dr. Anthony Fauci, About the NIH response.

“I write to inform you that I have retired from the government service, as of today, on 11/2/2025,” Tabak wrote in an email, according to reports, he circulated the NIH staff, earlier this week. The note did not explain the reason for his departure.

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Dr. Lawrence Tabak testifies before the Senate Assignments Subcommittee on Work, Health and Human Services and Education on Capitol Hill on May 4, 2023. (Somodevilla/Getty images)

Tabak’s resignation occurs in the middle of a shake within the Department of Health and Human Services, the NIH matrix agency, which occurred once the president Donald Trump He assumed the position in January. According to Trump, the agency has faced cuts to programs and reports have indicated that the administration has plans to fire a treasure of HHS employees. In general, Tabak would have been promoted to interim director, while Trump’s nominee waited for confirmation. However, the position was assigned to Dr. Matthew Mempo, a former superior researcher at the National Institute of Infectious Allergies and Diseases and a known critic of Covid vaccines mandates.

Tabak was part of a group of agency leaders, including Fauci and former NIH director, Francis Collins, whom Congress researchers accused of trying to manipulate the narrative around the origins of the COVID-19 virus. Through the investigations of the Republican Party, it was determined that Tabak was part of a controversial phone call with Fauci, Collins and several prominent scientists in which critics have argued that it was a catalyst for the publication of a scientific document that was launched by postulating that the virus originated a laboratory was not plausible.

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Security personnel are guard outside the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China. (Héctor Retamal/AFP through Getty Images)

I was also in charge and the center when it came to Republican party On whether the risky function research was occurring at the Wuhan Virology Institute in China, and faced criticism for the slow launch of the information requested by Republican researchers for these concerns.

Tabak “(treated) with all disorderly or intractable problems” and was “often … the type of fall when things (were) on the side,” said Jeremy Berg, former director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of NIH , in social media following news of the resignation of Tabak. “Larry has determined so much S — Throughout the years that he would have been well qualified to work behind the elephants in an old circus.”

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Fox News Digital communicated with the NIH to comment, but did not receive an answer for publication time.