The Senate on Wednesday voted to confirm Dr. Erica Schwartz, a physician who has repeatedly affirmed the safety and efficacy of childhood vaccines, as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the agency’s first full-time leader in nearly a year.
The 51-to-44 vote fell mostly along partisan lines. Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia was the lone Democrat to vote in her favor.
The confirmation of Dr. Schwartz, who was a deputy surgeon general in the first Trump administration, was all but guaranteed after the Senate health committee voted on Thursday to advance her nomination for a vote by the full Senate.
Dr. Schwartz was the Trump administration’s third nominee for C.D.C. director in two years. She holds degrees in law and medicine and is a retired rear admiral in the Commissioned Corps of the U.S. Public Health Service. She will need to manage an agency that has been without a confirmed director for all but one month since President Trump returned to the White House.
Since Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took office last year, the C.D.C. has lost about a third of its staff to layoffs and resignations, endured a shooting at its headquarters in Atlanta, and is grappling with a string of high-profile outbreaks including of cyclosporiasis in the United States and Ebola in Africa.
Outbreaks are inevitable, but the weakened C.D.C. seems much less able to contain them than it used to be, said Gigi Gronvall, a biosecurity expert at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
“It’s becoming very obvious what happens when the invisible workings of public health are not functioning the way we need them to,” she said. “But how much good can she do?” she added, referring to Dr. Schwartz. “The main problem is R.F.K. Jr.”
The C.D.C. has been in the cross hairs of Mr. Kennedy’s efforts to rescind recommendations for childhood vaccinations, most of which have been stymied by the courts.
Susan Monarez, the C.D.C.’s previous director, was confirmed by the Senate a year ago. But about a month later, Mr. Kennedy fired her over her refusal to accept the recommendations of his handpicked panel of vaccine advisers.
At her confirmation hearing before the Senate health committee last month, Dr. Schwartz was repeatedly questioned about her willingness and ability to push back against Mr. Kennedy’s policies.
“We need a C.D.C. director that will actually stand up to crazy, stupid things being said that undermine faith in immunization,” Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana and the health committee chair, said during the hearing, adding that it was “evil” to promote misinformation about vaccines.
“Are you that person?” he asked Dr. Schwartz.
Dr. Schwartz said she was unaware of Mr. Kennedy’s interference in vaccine decisions, and that she did not expect the administration to ask her to make any decisions that might harm American children.
Mr. Cassidy later said he would support her nomination after a page on the C.D.C.’s website about vaccines and autism was modified to address his objections.
At her hearing, Dr. Schwartz also expressed strong support for other ideas central to Mr. Kennedy’s agenda, including the importance of a healthy diet and exercise in combating chronic diseases.
“I am all in on the Make America Healthy Again agenda,” she said.
