The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was not immune to the effects of the government shutdown that is now in its 16th day. The agency had to furlough 9,000 employees, leaving just 4,000 running the CDC, according to a report in The Atlantic.
Without the CDC, the nation cannot track disease outbreaks or certain virus strains — like flu strains — that occur, either in the United States or abroad that affect U.S. citizens. For example, if a novel virus appears, limited operations at the CDC would mean a delay in the creation of vaccines and confusion as to what antivirals to use, according to the report.
According to Gregory Poland, an infectious-disease expert at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., the limited operations of the CDC affect the Mayo Clinic and other hospitals and health systems. "We're not going to be getting national intelligence about what's going on [in terms of infectious disease outbreaks,]" he said in the article. "We'll know what's going on in our area. But we serve a national and international population and we won't have up-to-the-minute data."
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