Layoffs have hit the CDC's Vessel Sanitation Program, where all full-time employees have been eliminated, according to an April 10 report from CBS News.
"Affected services include outbreak investigations; coordination with state and local health departments; follow-up on lab-confirmed cases of acute gastroenteritis after travel; and communications such as website updates," a CDC official told CBS News.
An official said services will not completely come to a halt and that a group of about a dozen officers in the program employed by the U.S. Public Health Service remain.
But the Vessel Sanitation Program now only has one epidemiologist for outbreak investigations, and they are relatively new to the role and still in training, according to the CBS News report.
In an email to Travel Weekly, a CDC spokesperson said "critical programs" in the CDC will continue under Health and Human Services secretary Robert Kennedy's "vision to streamline HHS to better serve Americans," and that Vessel Sanitation Program would continue with its programmatic activities, including unannounced sanitation inspections and monitoring and assisting with gastrointestinal outbreaks, as well as tracking and reporting.
"This work has not stopped, as the VSP is primarily staffed by [Public Health Service] commissioned officers who were not subject to the reduction in force," the spokesperson said.
Cruise ship outbreaks in 2025 are occurring at double the pace of early 2024. The CDC has documented 12 so far this year, almost all attributed to norovirus, compared to six in the same period last year.
Update: This report was updated to include a comment from the CDC.