New York — The federal government’s disease tracking agency has temporarily suspended its diagnostic testing for rabies, monkeypox and a number of other infectious diseases.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week Posted a list For more than twenty types of tests that have become unavailable.
This is not the first time the CDC has paused some of its lab tests. It is pausing more types of tests than ever before, and it’s not entirely clear why, said Scott Baker, CEO of the Association of Public Health Laboratories.
A government spokesman described the pause as temporary and attributed it to “a routine review to support our commitment to conducting high-quality laboratory tests.”
“We expect some of these tests to be available through CDC laboratories again in the coming weeks,” said Andrew Nixon of the US Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees CDC. “In the meantime, CDC stands ready to support our state and local partners to access the public health tests they need.”
CDC laboratory operations It was flawed During the COVID-19 pandemic, they were the subject of a subsequent case Working group review. The agency has been evaluating its tests since 2024, Baker said.
He noted that there may be other reasons for taking tests offline, including staffing issues.
The pause on laboratory testing follows CDC’s significant downsizing last year through layoffs, retirements, resignations and non-renewal of temporary appointments. Staffing was down 20% to 25%, according to various estimates, and that was felt throughout the agency, including labs.
The smallpox virus and rabies laboratories lost about half of their former staff, and the CDC’s malaria branch was further decimated, according to the National Public Health Alliance, an organization of former and current CDC workers that formed in the wake of its downsizing.
Some of the paused tests focus on common infections for which a commercial test is available, such as Epstein-Barr virus, the varicella-zoster virus that causes chickenpox and shingles. But the list also includes tests for some more exotic agents, such as the parasitic worms responsible for “snail fever” and the virus that causes it. “Sloth fever.”
Some specialized state labs, such as those in New York and California, have the capacity to pick up the slack while CDC testing is paused, Baker said.
He described the downtimes as “worrying, but only if they were permanent.”
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