The CDC didn’t warn the public or healthcare providers about the cyclosporiasis outbreak until July 14, even though the first illnesses began in mid-May and Michigan had already warned the public on July 1. That delay landed in the middle of a growing outbreak that has sickened more than 7,000 people nationwide, with more than 100 hospitalizations and no deaths to date, while the federal machine stumbled through its own shortages.
Who Pays for the Cuts
Dr. Joel Barratt, who headed the federal lab responsible for identifying parasitic outbreaks nationwide, said the Trump administration’s budget cuts and hiring freezes slowly hollowed out his staff. By September, his 11-person team had been reduced to three, and he resigned. He said he had warned CDC leadership before leaving that losing staff could hurt the response to future outbreaks. “The response is being hampered by the loss of specialized staff and the loss of hands-on-deck needed to identify the source of the outbreaks,” he said. Later, he added, “It’s a lot,” and, “And it was a lot to do even prior to the reductions.”
The Division of Parasitic Diseases and Malaria, where Barratt’s team worked, was funded largely by USAID, with smaller amounts from the CDC. Most of the division focused on malaria abroad through the President’s Malaria Initiative, which was funded by USAID and partially run by the agency. When Trump took office and dismantled USAID, the division was left with a $29 million hole to plug. Nearly $30 million in funding disappeared from Barratt’s CDC division when Trump axed the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Barratt said the budget tightening meant his team couldn’t renew contracts for employees, many of whom were hired under a fellowship program called Title 42, which allowed the CDC to hire highly skilled scientists from other countries. The White House said those workers were not part of the administration’s reduction-in-force initiatives. The wording doesn’t change the result: fewer people, less capacity, slower response.
What the Experts Saw
Dr. Dan Jernigan, who was the director of the CDC’s Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Disease division until August, when he resigned over ethical and scientific concerns with the administration, said, “This is a group that was underfunded historically. A significant amount of their budget was coming from USAID, and when those funds were at risk or didn’t come, we had to make decisions.” He also said, “The cyclospora experts at CDC are few in numbers,” and, “When you have a big outbreak, you have to pull in people. And the people that would have been pulled in were others in the parasitic division, like those working on malaria and neglected tropical diseases.”
The CDC lost roughly one-quarter of its employees in 2025 through reduction-in-force cuts ordered by the Trump administration. The White House spokesperson said the President’s Fiscal Year 2027 budget “actually proposes a $33 million increase for food safety activities to strengthen the CDC’s domestic capabilities.” That promise sits beside the damage already done: staff gone, training delayed, and the public left waiting.
Nationally, more than 7,000 cases of the parasite have been confirmed or are under investigation, according to the CDC. The agency said there have been more than 100 hospitalizations but no deaths to date. Many cases are part of the outbreak in the Midwest, which could be the largest cyclospora outbreak on record if all tied to the same source, while others are part of separate investigations. Infected people may have symptoms including watery diarrhea, cramping and bloating for weeks, and because symptoms can take a week or longer to show up after exposure, zeroing in on the culprit can be difficult.
What They’re Calling Response
Federal officials announced Thursday that they believed the outbreak in several Midwestern states was linked to shredded iceberg lettuce served by Taco Bell restaurants. The company said it has removed the compromised lettuce from its supply chain. Supplier Taylor Farms de Mexico has recalled iceberg lettuce sourced from central Mexico from the U.S. market. The FDA initially announced that a sample from Taylor Farms tested positive for cyclospora, but later said the finding was a false positive.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said it is working with federal and state partners to monitor cyclospora case counts and cluster activity. An official said at a briefing last week that testing has taken longer because the genome of cyclospora is more complicated than that of other parasites. The White House said cyclospora has posed a “unique challenge for contact tracers” and that “the reality is that the Trump administration has been aggressively coordinating response efforts to trace and contain Cyclospora.”
The CDC has recently added cyclosporiasis to an electronic reporting system it shares with state health departments, but state officials haven’t yet been trained to enter cases. Sources said those trainings used to be done at workshops and scientific conferences, something the Trump administration has limited. Michigan alone has reported more than 5,000 cases, while the CDC has verified only 1,645 domestic cases. It’s the kind of reporting delay the CDC hasn’t seen in 15 years, a source said.
Achyut KC, a medical epidemiologist who left the CDC in 2022, said, “I don’t perceive that same level of urgency,” and added, “What I can say is that the contrast with my own experience at CDC is noticeable.” Dr. Michael Osterholm, who directs the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said, “This outbreak deserves a hot wash, or a major review, because there were so many things we could learn from this that went wrong.”
Barratt said the current level of cyclosporiasis cases is not unexpected given the trend of rising cases each summer for the past couple decades, but he said the CDC’s response has changed. “What has changed is our – the US’s – ability to respond to these outbreaks,” he said. “The reduction in staff has hampered the process.” The outbreak spread through a system already stripped down, then dressed up as coordination after the fact.