April 1 (UPI) — Thousands of employees of the Department of Health and Human Services were terminated Tuesday as the Trump administration continues to shrink the size of the federal government.
Layoff notices began to go out Monday evening and continued into Tuesday morning.
Agency divisions most impacted included the Office of Infectious Disease and HIV/AIDS Policy and the Office of Minority Health, whose website shows up in search engines but appears to have been removed.
The FDA’s Office of Media Affairs was also shuttered, and about 50 members of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research lost their jobs.
HHS announced Sunday that the layoffs were in accordance with an executive order issued by President Donald Trump in February that told “agency heads” to “promptly undertake preparations to initiate large-scale reductions in force.”
A memo was sent to employees that encouraged employees to take their laptops home daily in case they were fired and unable to access worksites, NBC News reported.
HHS is expected to purge 300 jobs at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, 1,200 jobs at the National Institutes of Health, around 2,400 full-time jobs at the CDC and 3,500 jobs at the FDA.
Federal health officials have said some departments to be eliminated or downsized may have their responsibilities shifted over to a newly created entity, the Administration for Healthy America, or AHA, such as the Health Resources and Services Administration and Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
It is expected that the 28 divisions of the HHS will be restructured into 15 divisions.
