Significant cuts to CDC’s MMWR release reversed hours later

WASHINGTON — The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention staff behind the agency’s flagship publication have suffered deep cuts in layoffs that the Department of Health and Human Services blamed on the government shutdown, according to five people familiar with the matter. But by Saturday evening, the layoffs appeared to have been reversed.

An HHS official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said workers who produce the weekly Morbidity and Mortality Report may have mistakenly received reduction-in-force notices because of coding errors in their job classifications.

Earlier Saturday, almost the entire staff at MMWR, known as the “voice of the CDC,” had been laid off, the publication’s former editor-in-chief Charlotte Kent told STAT in her first public interview since leaving the agency in February. Four other people with knowledge of the cuts also confirmed that MMWR staff had been laid off.