On Thursday, Jeff Zients, the Biden administration’s lead on Covid-19 announced he is resigning.

The Daily Caller reports:

“Jeff spent the last 14 months working tirelessly to help combat COVID.  He is a man of service and an expert manager. I will miss his counsel and I’m grateful for his service,” Biden said in a statement.

Dr. Ashish Jha, the Dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, will replace Zients, Biden said in his nomination.

“Jha is one of the leading public health experts in America, and a well known figure to many Americans from his wise and calming public presence,” the statement read.

Zients’ departure coincides with the administration’s recent effort to shift messaging away from Covid-19.

“Thanks to the progress we have made this past year, COVID-19 need no longer control our lives,” Biden said at his State of the Union address March 1. “We will continue to combat the virus as we do other diseases. And because this is a virus that mutates and spreads, we will stay on guard.”

Zients has also been floated as a possible candidate to take over as White House chief of staff, according to Politico.

Klain’s recent interview with the Washington Post only fueled speculation about his departure after he pointed out that past chiefs of staff have typically left before the two-year mark. “It is a grinding job, there’s no question about it,” he told the Post. “It takes a lot of stamina to do it. So we’ll see how long it lasts.”

But Zients, who runs the Covid team and makes nearly every major decision about the direction of the pandemic response, has emerged largely unscathed. He has yet to be called to testify before Congress about the Covid response. And unlike Walensky and Dr. ANTHONY FAUCI, he has made only a handful of television appearances. He doesn’t have a public Twitter account either, mirroring the approach of many in Biden’s inner circle. The result: he is, effectively, invisible to much of the public even as he wields immense power over Biden’s top priority.

“Everything that gets to the president gets filtered through Zients,” one person familiar with the matter said of the Covid response decision-making process. Asked in a Senate hearing last month who is the “head coach” of the Covid-19 response, Fauci pointed to Zients.

“I’ve worked with a lot of people in Washington over the years and Jeff really stands out as a real star,” Fauci told West Wing Playbook.