CDC cuts leave US less prepared for disease outbreaks, former officials warn

Demonstrators outside the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia on 4 December 2025. Photograph: Megan Varner/Bloomberg via Getty Images View image in fullscreen Demonstrators outside the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia on 4 December 2025. Photograph: Megan Varner/Bloomberg via Getty Images CDC cuts leave US less prepared for disease outbreaks, former officials warn As measles, hantavirus and cyclospora spread, experts say lost staff and expertise are slowing the response A series of health challenges – hantavirus , screwworm, Ebola , cyclospora, measles, whooping cough, bird flu – are exposing the widening gaps in America’s ability to prevent, identify and halt infectious disease outbreaks. The rapid dismantling of the US public health system at all levels means the US is in worse shape than it was before the Covid pandemic, former top CDC officials say. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) lost much of its funding for battling parasites, which are notable global killers, in the last year. Experts were tasked with monitoring potential outbreaks – such as a previously rare parasite called cyclospora – around the US and the world, lending expertise to help stop crises in their tracks. But their funding was decimated, and many people at the CDC were laid off or resigned without being replaced. “Are we ready for the next big pandemic? My answer is no,” said Dan Jernigan, former director of the CDC’s National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases. Debra Houry, former chief medical officer of the CDC, told the Guardian: “Unfortunately, we’re really moving in the wrong direction.” Some 80% of senior leadership positions at the CDC still have no permanent officials appointed, and between 25 and 30% of the CDC’s entire staff are gone. “Those are boots on the ground,” Houry said. “When you have Ebola, hantavirus, measles, and throw cyclospora in there – staffers were already spread thin, and now they’re spread even more thin.” When the Trump administration effectively dismantled the US Agency for International Development (USAID) last year, the CDC lost around $40m in funding to fight malaria and neglected tropical diseases, which means 35 employees – out of 73 – were laid off from those divisions. The program was able to claw back $4m, but faces an uncertain future as the administration dramatically reshapes foreign aid, even as more people die from malaria and other infectious diseases around the world. And the laid-off employees were some of the premier experts in the US on all parasites, not just malaria. “We’re not where we would have been with parasitic diseases because of the changes that happened to USAID,” Jernigan said. “The laboratory methods you use and the expertise and the microscopy and all of that stuff is the same… So the expertise in parasitic diseases has dropped.” The CDC laboratory specializing in cyclospora, for instance