In the last several weeks, the president grew angry with Mr. Azar after articles in The Washington Post and The New York Times depicted the White House as slow to respond to the coronavirus outbreak, according to several officials familiar with his thinking. They said Mr. Trump was enraged that he was being criticized in accounts that portrayed Mr. Azar as having been aggressive in responding to the threat early on.

Mr. Azar’s allies say he was one of the few people who tried to alert the West Wing to a looming public health crisis in January and early February. They note that some officials accused Mr. Azar of being “an alarmist” for his repeated warnings about the coronavirus at a time when Mr. Trump was publicly playing down the threat.

But others have said Mr. Azar was not clear enough with Mr. Trump about the magnitude of the threat. Several aides to the president said that Mr. Azar was so focused on keeping his job and preserving his standing in the White House that he gave conflicting information — dire one day, optimistic the next — that ended up confusing Mr. Trump and his senior advisers.

Some of Mr. Azar’s critics have even accused him of misleading top White House officials. Last week, senior officials felt blindsided when Dr. Rick Bright, the head of a crucial drug and vaccine development unit at Department of Health and Human Services, issued a blistering statement saying he had been removed from his post after he resisted political pressure to back unproven drugs publicly heralded by the president. In a meeting in the Situation Room moments earlier, Mr. Azar had told the vice president that Mr. Bright had received a promotion.

The episode at the C.D.C. headquarters has also reverberated with White House and health officials, some of whom saw it as an example of Mr. Azar’s pettiness. Ms. Verma had made a special effort to get to Atlanta after traveling the day before with Mr. Pence, catching up to the president after his tour had been canceled, then abruptly put back on his schedule.

But she was left off the president’s tour, which unfolded on national television. Mr. Azar stood with Mr. Trump, who wore a red “Keep America Great” hat produced by his re-election campaign, and Dr. Robert R. Redfield, the director of the C.D.C., for almost an hour as the president extolled his administration’s work. Ms. Verma and Dr. Adams were nowhere to be seen. To then be told to join a receiving line with other guests waiting to shake Mr. Azar’s hand infuriated Ms. Verma.

One senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the events, insisted that Mr. Azar had no knowledge of the staging of the C.D.C. event, and that it was dictated by White House advance officials.