As cases as diarrhea-causing cyclospora spreads across the United States, former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials say the country’s response is being severely hampered by staff cuts at the agency.
According to Joel Barratt, a molecular parasitologist and assistant professor at Emory University School of Medicine who previously led the team, following massive government layoffs last year by President Donald Trump and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency, the CDC laboratory responding to parasitic cyclospora outbreaks was reduced from 11 people to just three.
“Simple math shows that the response to the epidemic – which requires quick and timely responses – will be significantly limited,” says WIRED. “Cyclospora is just one piece. They’re in the news right now, but there are other, more dangerous pathogens than cyclospora.”
Barratt says he voluntarily left the CDC in September after eight years with the agency because he believed he could no longer “do good public health” in the face of sweeping policy changes and staff purges under Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
“The work environment became hostile,” he says. “I had to meet with a lot of people in my office and tell them, ‘Listen, I’m really sorry that we can’t extend the employment contract because of the hiring freeze.’”
WIRED reported in October that the CDC had reduced its total workforce by about 3,000, or about a quarter of the agency, since January 2025. That number includes layoffs and people who accepted the Trump administration’s buyout program. The estimates were compiled by American Federation of Government Employees Local 2883, which represents CDC workers. The size of the incisions in Barratt’s former laboratory was: first described by Nature.
An HHS spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.
Nearly 7,000 people nationwide may have contracted cyclospora, although experts say the number is almost certainly higher. As of Thursday, more than 4,300 cases had been identified in Michigan alone.
The CDC is also weakened by a wave of public health crises. Amid staff reductions, the agency is also responding to a major Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as well as several outbreaks in the U.S., including measles; E. Coli associated with frozen berries; infant botulism found in some powdered infant formulas; AND salmonella from several sources. CDC is working to determine the source of the cyclosporiasis outbreak and has identified lettuce from Taylor Farms as a possible source, anonymous sources say Washington Post..
“Even before the 2025 cuts, we knew that our public health surveillance systems and our food safety systems left much to be desired,” says Amira Roess, a professor of global health and epidemiology at George Mason University and a former CDC epidemiological intelligence officer.
Barratt says responding to disease outbreaks is a convoluted process that requires a lot of coordination between states and the federal government.
Cyclospora presents its own set of challenges, particularly the delay between the time of initial contact with a contaminated food product and the onset of disease. Symptoms may take a week or two to appear, and people who become ill may not seek medical assist for several more days, if at all.
When a stool sample tests positive for cyclospora, it is sent to that state’s health department for analysis, which then forwards it to the CDC for genetic testing. At the same time, epidemiologists from the state health department contact the patient to conduct an interview to determine what the person has eaten in the past two weeks. This information is also sent to the CDC, where epidemiologists look for similarities between reported cases.
Meanwhile, the CDC’s parasitic disease laboratory is conducting genetic testing for parasites in a stool sample. This may assist identify patients infected with the same cyclospora strain. This information is used by CDC epidemiologists to identify clusters of diseases, groups of diseases that are related to each other by time, geographic location or habitual exposure.
“When it comes to investigating disease outbreaks, we don’t have a lot of techniques,” Roess says. “We know what to do, but if we don’t have the staff, a lot of things can’t be done.”