Biden expected to ask surgeon general to resign after inauguration ceremony: report

President-elect Joe Biden on Wednesday will reportedly ask for the resignation of U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams shortly after he takes office at noon.

The Washington Post reported that Biden will request Adams’s resignation as one of his first acts as president; he previously announced in December that Vivek Murthy would return to the role under his administration.

Adams’s resignation will represent a break from the Trump administration’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic and the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine, the Post reported. Murthy was previously fired by President Trump in the spring of 2017.

Biden is set to name an acting surgeon general within hours, according to the Post, though the position will reportedly not go to Deputy Surgeon General Erica Schwartz, who has said she will retire after being passed over. A request for comment from Biden’s transition team was not immediately returned.

The president-elect’s efforts to break with his predecessor’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic comes as the U.S. recently passed 400,000 deaths nationwide from the virus, and experts have warned that cases will reach their peak in the coming weeks.

Biden’s incoming Centers for Disease Control and Prevention chief, Rochelle Walensky, predicted Sunday that the U.S. could see another 100,000 deaths before the end of February.

“I think we still have some dark weeks ahead,” she said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”