The Trump administration is laying off 1,300 employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, shrinking the public health agency as part of an effort to cut costs across the federal government.
The layoffs amount to about 10% of the CDC’s total workforce and focused on probationary workers who have been in their roles for two years or less, according to a person familiar with the matter. The layoffs were first reported by the Associated Press.
They were one of the first moves by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who was sworn in Thursday as the head of the US Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the Atlanta-based CDC.
It wasn’t immediately clear what areas of the agency were affected by the layoffs. But the CDC is trying to track and contain a wide range of diseases, particularly an outbreak of bird flu. Nearly 70 people in the US have been infected by the bird flu, or H5N1 virus, and one person has died.
On Tuesday, President Donald Trump ordered federal agencies to come up with plans to lay off employees. Last week, senior CDC leaders were told to rank thousands of probationary employees based on how essential they are to operations.
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