The Trump administration slashed hundreds of employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — including dozens of workers crucial to public health safety — as the country grapples with a potential “quad-demic,” according to reports.
As part of an effort led by the Department of Government Efficiency, which billionaire Elon Musk heads, thousands of probationary workers within the Department of Health and Human Services were told they were being terminated over the weekend, including 1,300 at the CDC.
According to NBC News, those departures included around two dozen workers at the Laboratory Leadership Service, a two-year fellowship program that trains scientists to address public health threats.
“We have come up with a new slogan for LLS: ‘the disease detectors.’ If you’re not testing, you don’t know what disease is there,” a LLS fellow who received a termination notice told NBC News.
Other axed workers include half of the Epidemic Intelligence Service program, CBS News reported. EIS is another two-year fellowship program that trains health care professionals to become “disease detectives,” investigating public health threats, identifying their cause, and implementing control measures.
All of the hires from the most recent class were notified of their termination Friday, the outlet reported.
“The country is less safe. These are the deployable assets critical for investigating new threats, from anthrax to Zika,” Dr. Anne Schuchat, an EIS alum and former principal deputy director of the CDC, told CBS.
As of Friday, the Trump administration planned to gut the CDC by 10 percent, slashing 1,300 probationary employees, the Associated Press reported. The Department of Health and Human Services is expected to see more than 5,200 cuts to its 80,000-person workforce, the outlet reported.
The workforce changes come on the heels of Robert F. Kennedy’s swearing-in as HHS secretary.
The Independent has reached out to the HHS for comment.
“Health care is obviously a really important goal for the new secretary, for the president, and it was really important for us to make sure that we were very thoughtful,” a Trump administration official told Politico. “On the one hand, we obviously want to make the government more efficient, we want to reduce the size of the federal workforce. We also want to make sure that we’re very thoughtful about critical functions that the government needs to perform.”
The shakeup supports “broader efforts to restructure and streamline the federal government,” an HHS spokesperson told CBS News Friday. “This is to ensure that HHS better serves the American people at the highest and most efficient standard.”
The mass terminations also come as bird flu and four other major viruses — Covid-19, influenza, respiratory syncytial virus and norovirus — surge across the country.
Experts warned about the consequences of departures in the public health sphere.
“The potential for doing harm is significant,” Scott Cory, former chief information officer for an HHS agency, told The Guardian.
A CDC employee agreed, telling the outlet: “The possibility of new outbreaks or public health events is certain given the recent concerning spread of bird flu, which is still hampered by a slow response.”
The employee continued: “With external communications cut off, extensive work-stop orders and dramatic changes in the federal workforce, the ability of any health agency is severely limited and ultimately will serve no one but those who choose to profit off the suffering.”
