The CDC has a Cyclospora laboratory. DOGE downsized last year

As cases the The parasite that causes diarrhea is Cyclospora Across the United States, former employees of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say the country’s response is being severely hampered by staff cuts at the agency.

middle Mass layoffs of government workers Last year, it was carried out by President Donald Trump and so-called Government Efficiency Departmentthe Centers for Disease Control and Prevention laboratory responding to the outbreak of the parasite Cyclospora has been downsized from 11 people to just three, according to Joel Barratt, a molecular parasitologist and assistant professor at Emory University School of Medicine who previously led that team.

“Based on simple math, outbreak responses — which require rapid and timely responses — will be greatly diminished,” he told WIRED. “Cyclospora is just one piece. It’s in the news right now, but there are other pathogens that are more dangerous than Cyclospora.”

Barratt says he voluntarily left the CDC in September after working at the agency for eight years because he felt he could no longer “do the right thing with public health” amid sweeping policy reforms and staff purges under Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

“It has become a hostile work environment,” he says. “I had to sit down with several people in my office and say, ‘Look, I’m really sorry that we can’t renew your job because of the hiring freeze.’

Wired Reported in October The CDC has reduced its total workforce by about 3,000 employees — nearly a quarter of the agency — since January 2025. That number includes layoffs, as well as those who accepted the Trump administration’s buyout program. This estimate was compiled by the American Federation of Government Employees Local 2883, which represents workers at the CDC. The scale of the reductions was in Barratt’s former laboratory First reported by nature.

An HHS spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

Nearly 7,000 people across the country may have been infected with Cyclospora, although experts say that number is high. Almost certainly higher. As of Thursday, Michigan alone had identified more than 4,300 cases.

The CDC is also under intense pressure from a wave of public health crises. Amid staff cuts, the agency is also responding to a Massive Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as well as several outbreaks in the United States including measles; E. coli associated with frozen berries; Food poisoning in infants It is found in some types of powdered infant formula; and Salmonella From several sources. Anonymous sources said the CDC is working to determine the source of the cyclosporiasis outbreak and identified lettuce from Taylor Farms as a possible source. The Washington Post.

“Even before the cuts in 2025, we knew that our public health surveillance systems and food safety systems left a lot to be desired,” says Amira Royce, a professor of global health and epidemiology at George Mason University and a former CDC pandemic intelligence official.

Responding to disease outbreaks is a complex process that involves a lot of coordination between states and the federal government, Barratt says.

Cyclospora comes with its own set of challenges, particularly the time between a person’s initial exposure to a contaminated food product and the onset of illness. It can take a week or two for symptoms to appear, and people who become sick may not seek medical care for several days afterward, if at all.

Once a stool sample tests positive for Cyclospora, it is sent to that state’s health department for analysis, which then sends it to the CDC for genetic testing. Meanwhile, state health department epidemiologists contact the patient for an interview, which aims to determine what the person has eaten in the past two weeks. This information is also sent to the CDC, where epidemiologists look for commonalities between reported cases.

Meanwhile, the CDC’s Parasitic Diseases Laboratory performs genetic tests on parasites found in the stool sample. This can identify patients infected with the same strain of Cyclospora, information that CDC epidemiologists use to identify disease clusters, clusters of disease related to time, geographic location, or common exposures.

“When it comes to investigating outbreaks, we have a lot of techniques involved,” Ross says. “We know what needs to be done, but if we didn’t have the staff, we wouldn’t be able to get a lot of work done.”