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The Trump administration will reportedly fire thousands of federal employees working in public health and science agencies on Friday as part of its effort to shrink the size of government.
The latest cuts will affect about 5,200 employees working across agencies under the Department of Health and Human Services, including the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, according to STAT News.
The mass firing will target recent hires still on probationary employment, which typically applies to workers who have been on the job for less than one year, the health and medicine outlet reported.
The CDC alone will lose roughly 1,300 workers as a result of the purge. It’s unclear how many NIH employees will be fired.
Affected workers will be placed on paid leave for one month, without access to work systems, before their termination, according to STAT News.
“HHS is following the administration’s guidance and taking action to support the President’s broader efforts to restructure and streamline the federal government,” an HHS spokesperson told The Post.
“This is to ensure that HHS better serves the American people at the highest and most efficient standard,” the rep added.
The CDC and NIH did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
Over the past week, an unspecified number of contract workers at HHS agencies have also been informed that their positions are being eliminated, including dozens at the NIH’s Vaccine Research Center, STAT News reported.
Leadership-level changes at several HHS agencies have also taken place and more are expected as President Trump’s appointments are confirmed.
Nirav Shah, the CDC’s acting principal deputy director, has informed staff at the agency that his last day is Feb. 28, STAT News reported.
Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health Director Renee Wegrzy revealed in a LinkedIn post Friday that she had also been sacked.
“For the past two and a half years, I have woken up each day with both excitement and a sense of urgency to build a new and transformative capability for the American people,” she wrote. “While today started that same way, it ends such that I no longer have the opportunity to serve as the Director of ARPA-H.”
Dr. Lawrence Tabak, the former acting director of NIH who admitted to Congress last year that his agency funded risky gain-of-function virus research in China, abruptly resigned on Tuesday, according to multiple outlets.
Newly minted HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had vowed to make steep cuts at the department, which employs more than 80,000 people and has a nearly $2 trillion per year budget.
“In some categories … there are entire departments, like the nutrition department at the [Food and Drug Administration] … that have to go, that are not doing their job, they’re not protecting our kids,” Kennedy said during an MSNBC interview last November.
RFK Jr. has also suggested that he would fire at least 600 NIH employees on Day 1 in an effort to root out what he describes as “corruption” at the agency.
