MONDAY, April 21, 2025 (HealthDay News) — Key labs at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have shut down amid recent layoffs, raising concerns about tracking and controlling serious infections like viral hepatitis and antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea.

Among those let go were all 27 scientists in the nation’s only lab that performs advanced genetic testing needed for hepatitis outbreaks. That lab had been investigating an outbreak affecting multiple states when the layoffs hit.

“In essence, we’re flying blind,” Scott Becker, head of the Association of Public Health Laboratories, told The Washington Post.

The association wrote a letter to U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. asking for the laid off employees to be reinstated.

“Their loss eliminated critical national testing services that do not exist anywhere else within the [Health and Human Services] agencies,” the letter stated.

The same round of layoffs also shut down a CDC lab that tracked antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea, often called “super gonorrhea.” In all, 2,400 CDC employees were let go, The Post reported.

CDC labs have played a key role in tracking outbreaks of hepatitis C, a viral disease that can cause serious liver damage. Outbreaks in recent years have been tied to dialysis facilities, outpatient surgery clinics and prisons.

The CDC had recently identified nine infected patients in Florida tied to one outbreak. The lab was using advanced technology to see if others carried the same virus strain — a process that helps experts understand how diseases are spreading.

The increase in hepatitis C infections has been “stupendous in the past 20 to 25 years,” Dr. Judith Feinberg, a professor of medicine and infectious diseases at West Virginia University, told The Post.

“The CDC lab was capable of showing the genetic linkage between isolates of virus … and that helps you control it from public health policy. It helps you understand how and where disease is spreading, how the virus is evolving,” Feinberg added.

In the U.S., tens of thousands of people get viral hepatitis each year. It can spread through contaminated food, shared needles or close contact with blood that’s been infected.

According to the CDC, hepatitis is a leading cause of liver cancer and kills thousands of Americans annually.

The CDC also fired all 28 scientists in its Sexually Transmitted Infections (STI) lab, which tracked infections like chlamydia, syphilis and gonorrhea. That lab was the only one in the U.S. that tested how well antibiotics were working against drug-resistant gonorrhea strains.

“They are one of three laboratories in the world and the only in the U.S. that performs extensive antimicrobial susceptibility testing for gonorrhea,” said Kelly Wroblewski, director of infectious-disease programs at the Association of Public Health Laboratories.

More than 2 million STIs were diagnosed in 2023, including more than 600,000 cases of gonorrhea. Infection rates for gonorrhea, chlamydia and syphilis have jumped 90% in the past 20 years, data show.

Without the lab, Colleen Kelley, a professor of medicine at Emory University who treats patients with HIV and sexually transmitted infections, said, “no one will tell us if we are seeing more cases of this, and no one will be there to sound the alarm bells.”

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more on viral hepatitis among sexually active adults.

SOURCE: The Washington Post, April 18, 2025

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