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Hundreds of employees were fired from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) late on Friday, as the Trump Administration made good on its promise to begin mass layoffs in response to a prolonged government shutdown.
Some 1,300 employees received notices that they would be let go, among them leaders in departments related to respiratory diseases, chronic diseases, injury prevention and global health, the New York Times reported. Roughly 70 Epidemic Intelligence Service officers, also known as “disease detectives”, the entire staff and editors of the CDC’s publication Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), and the agency’s Washington office were all notified of their termination, according to the report.
The layoffs prompted outrage from public health experts. But in a move that has sown further confusion at the agency, hundreds of those employees were later told their dismissals were rescinded.
It comes as the CDC is still reeling from months of uncertainty after a change in leadership and priorities under new Health and Human Services (HHS) head Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Dr. Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, said Saturday that if the layoffs were made permanent, it would be a death blow for an agency that has already been gutted by previous cuts under Kennedy’s leadership.
“CDC will have lost its ability to detect outbreaks and respond to them. It will no longer be able to track diseases, in America and around the globe. That includes infectious threats like flu, foodborne illnesses, and Ebola, as well as chronic diseases and injuries,” she said.
Rasmussen added that the loss of the MMWR would remove the CDC’s ability to communicate with the public.
“Together, this means the CDC is not functional. It cannot carry out any of its mission,” she says. “America has no national public health agency any more.”
Other physicians, including Michelle Au, Georgia State Representative and anesthesiologist, noted on social media that the U.S. is “barreling into respiratory season—when viruses like flu, COVID, and RSV surge—flying blind.”
On Saturday, hundreds of those who had received dismissal notices were then told they would be keeping their jobs, Reuters reported.
Employees with the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report and the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases were among those who had their dismissals reversed, according to Reuters.
Andrew Nixon, Communications Director at the Department of Health and Human Services, told TIME that “employees across multiple divisions are receiving reduction-in-force notices as a direct consequence of the Democrat-led government shutdown.”
“All HHS employees receiving reduction-in-force notices were designated non-essential by their respective divisions,” Nixon said. “HHS continues to close wasteful and duplicative entities, including those that are at odds with the Trump administration’s Make America Healthy Again agenda.”
It comes at a time when the country’s top public health agency has dealt with blow after blow, from a tragic shooting at their Atlanta headquarters, to Kennedy’s firing of former CDC director, Susan Monarez.
Read More: The CDC Shooting is a Dark Sign for Science and America
The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) had told federal agencies to plan for reductions in force (RIFs) in the event of a government shutdown, caused by a disagreement about healthcare and subsidies related to the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
The gap between the two parties is primarily due to a Democratic demand to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies for low-and middle-income Americans, which are set to expire at the end of the year.
Read More: Republicans Say Democrats Want to Give Healthcare to Illegal Immigrants. Here Are the Facts
The White House and Republicans have sought to blame Democratic leaders for the shutdown, and President Donald Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Friday that firings would target those who are “Democrat-oriented.”
“These are largely people that the Democrats want and many of them will be fired,” Trump said. “It will be a lot.”
The mass firings come just two months after the CDC experienced a mass exodus of top officials from the agency, who said they were prompted to resign in August after Kennedy sidelined officials and ignored scientific research and protocols since he was assigned to his role to lead the department.
“Having worked in local and national public health for years, I have never experienced such radical non-transparency, nor have I seen such unskilled manipulation of data to achieve a political end rather than the good of the American people,” the CDC’s former vaccine chief Dr. Demetre Daskalakis said in his resignation statement.
In a hearing with Senate lawmakers after her ousting by Kennedy, former director Monarez described heated meetings with the HHS head, who she says called the CDC “the most corrupt federal agency” in the government and asked her to fire vaccine scientists without cause.
“I was fired for holding the line on scientific integrity,” Monarez said.
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