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The CDC Has a Cyclospora Lab. DOGE Downsized It Last Year (Wired, 7/17/26)
https://www.wired.com/story/cdc-cyclospora-lab-doge-downsized-it-last-year/As cases of the diarrhea-causing parasite cyclospora rise across the US, former employees of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say the country’s response is being severely hampered by personnel cuts at the agency.
Amid mass government layoffs last year implemented by President Donald Trump and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency, the CDC lab that responds to outbreaks of the parasite cyclospora was 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, these outbreak responses—which require rapid, timely responses—are going to be greatly diminished,” he tells WIRED. “Cyclospora is just one piece. It's making the news right now, but there are other, more dangerous pathogens than cyclospora.”
Barratt says he left the CDC voluntarily in September after working at the agency for eight years because he felt he could no longer “do right by public health” amid sweeping policy overhauls and staff purges under Health and Human Services secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
-snip-
Amid mass government layoffs last year implemented by President Donald Trump and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency, the CDC lab that responds to outbreaks of the parasite cyclospora was 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, these outbreak responses—which require rapid, timely responses—are going to be greatly diminished,” he tells WIRED. “Cyclospora is just one piece. It's making the news right now, but there are other, more dangerous pathogens than cyclospora.”
Barratt says he left the CDC voluntarily in September after working at the agency for eight years because he felt he could no longer “do right by public health” amid sweeping policy overhauls and staff purges under Health and Human Services secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
-snip-
And from The Guardian yesterday:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jul/16/diarrhea-outbreak-cyclospora-parasite-cdc
Cyclospora is easy to miss in a clinic. Many routine stool tests do not include it, so a clinician must consider the parasite before the laboratory will look for it. You find it on purpose, or you do not find it.
Last year the federal government arranged for the country to miss it too. On 1 July 2025, the CDC downgraded FoodNet, the active surveillance network it has run with the FDA, the USDA and 10 state health departments since 1995, making tracking of Cyclospora optional at its sites, along with listeria, campylobacter, shigella, vibrio and yersinia. Of the eight pathogens it was built to watch, six were downgraded to optional. Salmonella and E coli remained mandatory. The change arrived with budget cuts and no public announcement, and was reported almost two months later, when a journalist asked.
-snip-
Let me be careful about what I am and am not claiming. The surveillance change did not contaminate anyone’s lettuce. Cyclospora would have entered the food supply this summer, whoever was counting. Nor is FoodNet the system that finds cases in Michigan; it never covered Michigan. It operates at 10 sites covering about 16% of the country, and its purpose is to be the instrument sensitive enough to tell the nation that something unusual is happening, and to say so against a consistent baseline.
-snip-
Nor was the FoodNet downgrade an isolated act of housekeeping. More than 3,000 public health workers have left the CDC through firings, forced retirements and attrition, roughly a quarter of its workforce by the end of last year, according to an analysis by KFF Health News. Much of what the CDC does is push money and expertise down to the state and local departments that conduct the interviews and the food tracebacks, and those are the people who will find whatever is doing this. The Trump administration has called the department it inherited a bloated bureaucracy and promised to close what it deems wasteful and duplicative. The redundancy eliminated here was the capacity to notice.
-snip-
Last year the federal government arranged for the country to miss it too. On 1 July 2025, the CDC downgraded FoodNet, the active surveillance network it has run with the FDA, the USDA and 10 state health departments since 1995, making tracking of Cyclospora optional at its sites, along with listeria, campylobacter, shigella, vibrio and yersinia. Of the eight pathogens it was built to watch, six were downgraded to optional. Salmonella and E coli remained mandatory. The change arrived with budget cuts and no public announcement, and was reported almost two months later, when a journalist asked.
-snip-
Let me be careful about what I am and am not claiming. The surveillance change did not contaminate anyone’s lettuce. Cyclospora would have entered the food supply this summer, whoever was counting. Nor is FoodNet the system that finds cases in Michigan; it never covered Michigan. It operates at 10 sites covering about 16% of the country, and its purpose is to be the instrument sensitive enough to tell the nation that something unusual is happening, and to say so against a consistent baseline.
-snip-
Nor was the FoodNet downgrade an isolated act of housekeeping. More than 3,000 public health workers have left the CDC through firings, forced retirements and attrition, roughly a quarter of its workforce by the end of last year, according to an analysis by KFF Health News. Much of what the CDC does is push money and expertise down to the state and local departments that conduct the interviews and the food tracebacks, and those are the people who will find whatever is doing this. The Trump administration has called the department it inherited a bloated bureaucracy and promised to close what it deems wasteful and duplicative. The redundancy eliminated here was the capacity to notice.
-snip-