Federal health officials have rescinded more than half of approximately 1,300 layoff notices sent to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention employees over the weekend, according to The Washington Post.
About 740 employees learned by Saturday evening that their Friday terminations had been canceled. Those brought back include staff working on measles and Ebola responses and suicide prevention programs. A federal health official attributed the initial firings to coding errors.
However, approximately 600 CDC employees remain terminated, including analysts responsible for monitoring biological, chemical and nuclear threats to the United States, the Post reported.
Beyond the CDC, dozens of dismissed workers at the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response held top-secret clearance and collaborated with intelligence agencies on biodefense matters, including pandemic preparedness and weaponized pathogen threats, a former Department of Health and Human Services official told The Washington Post.
Among those who remain terminated are about 100 employees at the National Center for Health Statistics, including a team operating the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Other affected divisions include portions of the Office of Science, the human resources ethics office, and teams monitoring prion diseases.
HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon said all employees receiving reduction-in-force notices “were designated non-essential by their respective divisions.”
More than 100 employees at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration were also terminated, current and former employees told the Post. The agency administers billions in grants for addiction and mental health programs.
Multiple infectious disease organizations condemned the firings. “Uncertainty around which staff have been fired or rehired leaves health professionals and the public in a state of complete confusion,” the groups said in a joint statement.
Demetre Daskalakis, former director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, called the on-again, off-again layoffs demoralizing for “a traumatized organization.“
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