Dr. Sanjay Gupta to CDC Director: ‘Who Is in Charge?’

GUPTA: "Dr. Frieden, I'm curious about -- I know you've had a very busy week. Who is in charge? And if you're in charge -- I mean, can you mandate things to happen? We know what's going on in Dallas. Could you say, 'Look, here's what you absolutely need to do in Dallas, this is required, I'm enforcing this to happen? ‘And if you can't do that, why can't you do that? Somebody needs to have some leadership, it seems, over the whole situation."

FRIEDEN: "Absolutely. And we work very closely with state and local governments. And when there's an episode in a state or local government, they are in charge and we support them in every way. They assign an incident manager; they establish an emergency operations system; they outline every aspect and we work very closely with them. There's a great collaboration. I think the issue that we've been challenged by is what do you do with the waste?"

GUPTA: "Is it necessary to have somebody who is absolutely in charge -- sort of a czar, if you will, over this? Who doesn't just provide guidance or recommendations, but provides mandates?"