The Trump administration ended on Saturday hundreds of employees in the centers for the control and prevention of diseases, including the fellows responsible for the key public health roles, according to two sources of the agency who spoke on condition of anonymity for concern for reprisals .
Among them were around two dozen workers who formed the laboratory leadership service, or LLS, a group responsible for training the employees of the Public Health Laboratory and supporting the efforts to respond to outbreaks. The two -year scholarship program was launched in 2015, focusing on laboratory safety and regulatory compliance.
“We came up with a new slogan for LLS: 'Disease detectors'. If you are not doing the test, you don't know what disease is there,” News told NBC News, a current fellow, which was among which he received Termination notices.
Electronic termination emails, which were sent to LLS staff members on Saturday night, quoted low performance such as the reason for layoff Said an official of the Middle Level CDC.
Multiple points of sale reported that a bigger brother program on CDC called the epidemic intelligence service, or EIS, known as “disease detectives” of the agency, was also significantly reduced. Until Sunday, however, the two officials who spoke with NBC News had not heard of firings in EIS. One, a senior CDC official said that all those who were going to be fired had been notified on Sunday.
“Even if Eis was saved, there are other scholarships that were not, and that is a pipe for the next generation of CDC leaders,” said the senior official. “We are being cut on your knees. It will paralyze public health for decades.”
Other departments that had cuts included the presidential management fellows, whose objective is to develop future public health leaders, and the Public Health Associated Program, which assigns fellows to local health agencies, the two officials said.
The termination process has been marked by chaos and lack of transparency.
Almost two weeks ago, the Personnel Management Office assigned CDC leadership to review a list of employees who were in test or term positions, including new directors, fellows and highly qualified non -citizens, and designate each one as “It must be retained,” “critical mission” or “not critical mission.” According to the two CDC officials, the lists did not seem to have been used in final shot decisions.
The representatives of the White House, the CDC and the Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to the requests for comments.
In recent years, LLS fellows have helped with dengue fever tests in American Samoa and Oopouche virus tests in Florida. In 2020, the group supervised Covid-19 tests for thousands of Arizona residents.
LLS fellows who received the termination notice said their co -workers were less concerned about their work than the movements pointed to public health.
“Many of us, we could have gone to more lucrative races,” said the partner, who spoke on condition of anonymity for concern to compromise his remaining remunerated license. “We could have worked to Pharma. We could have worked for biotechnology or something and have earned much more money. But we all passionate about public health and we only want public health to be successful.”
The dismissal messages were sent the day after the Trump administration informed the leaders of the CDCs of the plans to fire almost 1,300 test employees in the agency, approximately one tenth of its total workforce.
A representative of the Department of Health and Human Services, which supervises the CDC, said that the cuts were part of the greater effort of the administration to reduce the size of the Federal Labor Force.
“HHS is following the administration's guide and taking measures to support the broader efforts of the president to restructure and rationalize the federal government. This is to ensure that HHS better serves the US people with the highest and most efficient level,” Andrew Nixon, Department director, the department director. Communications, he wrote.
As part of the broad base cuts to the Federal Government implemented by the Trump administration and the Efficiency Department of the Government of Elon Musk, the Office of Personnel Management Officials ordered last week to the leaders of federal agencies that dismissed under that state. Since the directive was sent, at least some test employees have been sent notices by the veteran affairs and transport departments.
