BATON ROUGE — Louisiana's surgeon general, who last winter halted his agency's mass-vaccination events, has been tapped as the second-ranking official at the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Ralph Abraham's selection as the CDC’s Principal Deputy Director was confirmed Tuesday by a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson.

Abraham is a physician and former Republican U.S. representative. He was named Louisiana’s first surgeon general last year, tasked with crafting health policy and improving public health.

The appointment was first reported in a Substack post on "Inside Medicine."

Under Abraham's leadership, Louisiana health officials have stopped promoting mass vaccination events designed to suppress illness outbreaks, and he also has called COVID

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