Last Friday, over 1,000 employees of the CDC were let go in an email; the next day, some of these employees were rehired, owing to the email going out mistakenly. CIDRAP has the news.
Including in the reduction-in-force (RIF) firings were “70 disease detectives in the Epidemic Intelligence Service, the editors of Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), the entire staff of the CDC's Washington, DC, office, and the official in charge of measles response.” However, approximately 700 of the 1,300 fired employees were rehired by Saturday morning, including the editors of MMWR. An HHS official chalked the accident up to a “coding error.”
The CDC is already floundering a bit as it reels from the abrupt firing of former director Susan Monarez. Her ouster “led several top-level CDC staff to leave in solidarity.”
SHEA issued a statement on their website decrying the accidental firing of the CDC employees. In it, they write that “the initial targeting of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s core functions and scientific leadership will cripple the agency that keeps our country safe by monitoring and preventing disease and saving lives in every community across the country.” They also noted that “even prior to the latest round of layoffs, clinicians across the country reported dangerous interruptions in access to services including laboratory testing, public reporting and expert analyses of outbreak data and publication of clinical guidelines, all of which directly impact patient care. Additional layoffs will further erode CDC’s ability to perform essential duties and put our country’s health at risk.”
