A quarter of the CDC is gone

After the latest After a wave of mass firings at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention over the weekend, the union representing agency employees estimates that about 3,000 people this year — about a quarter of the agency’s workforce — have left the agency.

This number includes workers affected by layoffs earlier this year, as well as those who accepted the Trump administration’s “Fork in the Road” buyout program.

The latest cuts came amid the ongoing government shutdown. On October 10, more than 1,300 CDC employees received termination notices. But soon after, about 700 of those people were told via email that their employment had been wrongly terminated and that they were not, in fact, subject to a reduction in force. An estimated 600 people remain finished.

An additional 1,300 CDC employees, according to the union, are on administrative leave and receiving pay but not working.

The Trump administration did not share official numbers of people targeted for the cuts. This estimate was compiled by the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Local 2883, which represents workers at the CDC.

The current round of cuts affects the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, the National Center for Health Statistics, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Library, the agency’s human resources division, and campus safety staff, as well as the CDC’s office in Washington, D.C., which serves as a liaison to Congress and provides public health information to policymakers.

“All HHS employees who received reduction-in-force notices have been classified as nonessential by their respective departments,” Andrew Nixon, director of communications at the Department of Health and Human Services, told WIRED via email.

Among those reinstated are staff who publish the agency’s flagship publication, the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, as well as leadership at the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases and the National Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases and Zoonoses, according to AFGE. Members of the Epidemic Intelligence Service, the “disease detective” unit of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, have also been brought back.