Nancy Messonnier, the senior CDC official who first warned the US about the coronavirus pandemic, is resigning

• CDC health official Nancy Messonnier announced she was resigning on Friday.
• She said her last day with the CDC would be May 14.
• Messonnier was the first US official to publicly warn the country of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Nancy Messonnier - a senior health expert at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who was the first US official to publicly warn the US of the COVID-19 pandemic - is resigning, according to an email seen by the Washington Post.

"My family and I have determined that now is the best time for me to transition to a new phase of my career," she wrote in the email, according to The Post. "CDC has provided me many meaningful, rewarding, and challenging opportunities to grow intellectually and mature as a public health leader."

Messonnier, who is serving as the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the CDC, told her colleagues that her last day with the CDC will be May 14.

At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Messonnier provided regular briefings about the the virus.

But after she told Americans that the spread of COVID-19 was inevitable, stocks started to plummet, Business Insider reported last year.

Shortly thereafter, Messonnier's stopped, and then-President Donald Trump created the White House's coronavirus task force, led by then-Vice President Mike Pence.