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Days after hundreds of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention employees were laid off, former CDC officials are warning it has left the agency more unprepared to keep Americans healthy and safe.
While 1,300 CDC employees initially received reduction-in-force notices on Friday, about 700 were later notified their terminations were revoked, union officials said. Some of the RIF notices had been sent to CDC employees due to a coding error, a Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson said.
But, about 600 staff members remained terminated.
In a press conference Wednesday, the former CDC officials, who resigned earlier this year in protest after what they described as growing political interference in the agency's scientific work, shared their concerns about the recent cuts, which come after multiple rounds of layoffs already this year.
The CDC "cannot protect all of us in the U.S. if they continue to have staff and resource cuts," former Chief Medical Officer Debra Houry said. "When you look at what was eliminated and still eliminated, it's concerning for how the agency is going to function."
Demetre Daskalakis, who was the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said the "silencing and the downsizing of CDC means that we're not prepared for daily public health as well as for emergencies."
An HHS spokesperson blamed the latest layoffs on the ongoing government shutdown and said, "The Department is focused on restoring accountability, efficiency, and scientific integrity across all its agencies."
"The current reduction-in-force actions are a direct consequence of the Democrat-led government shutdown. Under the Biden administration, HHS became a bloated bureaucracy-expanding its budget by 38 percent and its workforce by 17 percent," the spokesperson said. "All employees receiving reduction-in-force notices were designated non-essential by their respective divisions. HHS continues to eliminate wasteful and duplicative entities, including those inconsistent with the Trump administration's Make America Healthy Again agenda."
According to Houry, the cuts include the Institutional Review Board, which reviews research studies; the ethics office, which reviews conflicts of interest; and the technology transfer office, which looks at patents.
Some communication and policy offices were also cut, making it more difficult to communicate health threats to the public, Houry said.
Another eliminated program Houry noted is the Employee Assistance Program, which provides counseling and support for staff.
"The CDC staff were attacked and shot at two months ago, and still require counseling. And certainly job insecurity can lead to mental health issues and suicidal thoughts, and this is a time when you certainly need services like EAP," she said.
HHS did not immediately respond when asked to confirm which offices were affected by cuts.
The new layoffs are on top of cuts made to federal health agencies earlier this year as part of Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s reorganization, which has been challenged in court.
"We were at like 13,600 and then with the several reductions in force, about 3,000 or so have been lost. And with these reductions in force, I anticipate they'll be just below 10,000 people," Houry said.
Daskalakis echoed that "we're really unprepared" due to the cuts.
"We've gotten to a point where so much muscle has been cut from CDC that in order to respond to a medium or large event, it will be extremely disruptive. We may not have all of the expertise needed because of some of the previous reductions in force, and we'll have some problems with the infrastructure that's needed to do the work," he explained.
Edited by Nicole Brown Chau
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