A haphazard mass slashing of staff at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention over the weekend has left questions around the impact of these terminations on the agency’s programming. Sources told Devex there’s still uncertainty around how this will impact global health work.
“Our understanding right now is that most centers across CDC have been impacted in some way,” said Abigail Tighe of the National Public Health Coalition, a network of former CDC employees, during a press briefing.
On Friday, more than 1,300 CDC employees received reduction-in-force, or RIF, notices that they would lose their jobs. But then, about 700 of those people received emails rescinding these terminations on Saturday — with the Trump administration claiming these employees were “mistakenly” placed on notice because of a coding error, said Yolanda Jacobs, president of AFGE Local 2883, a government employees’ union.