The US federal agency responsible for monitoring diseases has temporarily halted certain diagnostic testing, including those for rabies, human herpesvirus and several other infectious illnesses.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released a list on Monday showing that more than two dozen types of testing are now unavailable.
The CDC normally conducts testing for a wide range of pathogens to support state and local public health labs that lack the necessary capabilities. In late 2024, the agency began reviewing its testing programs as part of a broader internal evaluation.
Among the suspended services are tests for relatively common infections for which commercial testing is available, such as the Epstein-Barr virus and the varicella zoster virus, which causes chickenpox and shingles. However, the list also includes testing for less common organisms, including parasitic worms linked to “snail fever” and the virus responsible for “sloth fever”.
The CDC has not responded to the Guardian’s request for comment.
A combination of layoffs, hiring freezes and staff departures has reduced the number of experienced scientists available to assist laboratories. By July, the rabies team will have only one expert capable of providing clinical guidance to state and local officials, while the poxvirus team will have none, according to the New York Times.
The suspension of these lab services follows a period of major workforce reductions at the CDC over the past year, driven by layoffs, retirements, resignations and the expiration of temporary roles. Estimates from the Associated Press suggest that total staffing has dropped by 20% to 25%.
The poxvirus and rabies units have each lost roughly half of their staff, while the CDC’s malaria division has been cut even more severely, according to the National Public Health Coalition, a group composed of current and former CDC employees formed after the downsizing.
The CDC was thrown into upheaval last year when more than a thousand employees received notice from the Trump administration that they were losing their jobs in a move that erased entire offices within the agency. The move was then partly reversed days later, with hundreds of employees being offered their positions back.
In June, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, controversially hand-picked new members of the advisory committee on immunization practices (ACIP) after firing all the previous members. Those appointments were later stayed after a federal judge ruled that the move probably violated federal law.
As a result, the US now has no functioning advisory committee, and several key vaccines are no longer recommended, including the latest version of the flu and Covid shots and the inclusion of the RSV shot for infants in the federal Vaccines for Children program, which covers immunizations for more than half of US children.
The Associated Press contributed reporting
