CDC Sends Emails to Some Terminated Employees Asking Them to Return to Their Posts

Emails have been sent out to some CDC probationary employees rescinding previous termination notices. The AP has the news.

The emails from the agency included the subject line “Please read this e-mail immediately,” before imploring fired workers to “return to duty under your previous work schedule.” Around 180 people received reinstatement emails. It remains unclear “whether the employees would be spared from widespread job cuts that are expected soon across government agencies.”

Similar reversals have taken place at other federal agencies in the wake of the Trump administration’s mass firings of employees, including among “employees responsible for medical device oversight, food safety, [and] bird flu response.” The Atlanta-based CDC had somewhere around 700 to 750 employees cut loose of the 13,000 before the job cuts.

Newsweek’s reportage on the emails emphasizes the fact that these reinstatements are coming as a spike in measles cases continues to be observed in at least nine states. Those who received reinstatement emails “included outbreak responders in two fellowship programs — a two-year training that prepares recent graduates to enter the public health workforce through field experience and a laboratory program that brings in doctorate-holding professionals.”