Bismarck\u00a0 (CSi) \u2013 Gov. Doug Burgum Friday afternoon accepted the resignation of Interim State Health Officer Dr. Paul Mariani, thanking him for his leadership of the North Dakota Department of Health (NDDOH) and appointing NDDOH Chief of Staff Dirk Wilke to fill the role until a replacement can be named.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile Dr. Mariani\u2019s tenure was short, we are grateful for his service and for jumping into the many complexities of this extremely challenging role \u2013 including connecting directly with parents, school superintendents, mayors and local public health officials \u2013 at a time when our state is facing rising and record COVID-19 cases. We are saddened to see him leave and appreciate his meaningful contributions. Paul is a man of high intelligence and integrity. We agreed that the amended close contact order\u2019s penalty provisions \u2013 a misdemeanor as required by current state law \u2013 became a large and unforeseen distraction to our mission of slowing the spread of the coronavirus in our state.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u201cWhile the governor and I agreed on the urgent need to isolate positives and quarantine close contacts in accordance with CDC guidelines, and that the amended order\u2019s penalty provision was overly punitive, the circumstances around the handling of the order made my position untenable,\u201d Dr. Mariani said. \u201cI want to thank the Governor for his understanding and for the outstanding team at the North Dakota Department of Health for their professionalism and dedication to the health and safety of North Dakota citizens.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Bismarck\u00a0 (CSi) \u2013 Gov. Doug Burgum Friday afternoon accepted the resignation of Interim State Health Officer Dr. Paul Mariani, thanking him for his leadership of the North Dakota Department of Health (NDDOH) and appointing NDDOH Chief of Staff Dirk Wilke to fill the role until a replacement can be named. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":194129,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-208784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-state"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=208784"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208784\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":208785,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208784\/revisions\/208785"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/194129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=208784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=208784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=208784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}