BATON ROUGE — Louisiana's surgeon general, who last winter halted his agency's mass-vaccination events, has been tapped as the second-ranking official at the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Ralph Abraham's selection as the CDC’s Principal Deputy Director was confirmed Tuesday by a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson.

Abraham is a physician and former Republican U.S. representative. He was named Louisiana’s first surgeon general last year, tasked with crafting health policy and improving public health.

The appointment was first reported in a Substack post on "Inside Medicine."

Under Abraham's leadership, Louisiana health officials have stopped promoting mass vaccination events designed to suppress illness outbreaks, and he also has called COVID-19 vaccines "dangerous" despite their stemming the 2020 pandemic.

Abraham is a former congressman, a veterinarian and a medical doctor. During the pandemic, he supported the use of the malaria drug hydroxychlorquine and anti-parasitic ivermectin against the virus though studies showed they were ineffective.

Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, also a medical doctor, opposed Abraham's decision to stop vaccination events last winter.

“I’ve known Dr. Abraham for a long time and look forward to having a productive relationship with him," Cassidy said in a statement Tuesday. " I am hopeful that the two of us as doctors can continue to engage in science-based conversations to protect children, including vaccinating children to prevent measles, whooping cough, and hepatitis.”

The New York Times reported that, under Abraham, Louisiana official officials waited two months before telling residents about a whooping cough outbreak that had killed two people.