The mass layoffs of federal workers on Friday night swept up the top two leaders of the federal measles response team, even as the nation grapples with the most cases recorded since 2000, when measles was declared eliminated in the United States.
The layoffs also included dozens of other agency scientists with expertise in infectious diseases that have pandemic potential.
Trump administration officials have said that previous layoffs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were needed to reduce bloat and keep its focus on infectious diseases. And those reductions in force, or R.I.F.s, did spare most infectious disease teams.
But on Friday night, the administration fired hundreds of scientists, including those working to halt measles and an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Also cut was a team that supports surveillance of infectious diseases, as well as leaders of the C.D.C. center that oversees immunization and respiratory diseases.
The administration also fired members of the Epidemic Intelligence Service, the elite corps of “disease detectives” who are typically deployed to the sites of outbreaks. Officials also dismissed the team that puts together the C.D.C.’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, a prestigious publication that communicates the agency’s work on recommendations and outbreaks.
And at the agency’s center that forecasts and helps to manage public health emergencies, the administration dissolved the division of technology and innovation.
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