infectious diseases Archives - The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle

CDC pauses dozens of types of lab testing during evaluation and in wake of downsizing

Associated Press — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 13:00:00 +0000

The federal government’s disease-tracking agency has paused its diagnostic testing for rabies, monkeypox and a number of other infectious diseases.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week posted a list of more than two dozen types of testing that have become unavailable.

This is not the first time the CDC has paused some of its lab testing. But it is pausing more kinds of tests than ever before, and it is not totally clear why, said Scott Becker, chief executive officer of the Association of Public Health Laboratories.

A government spokesman called the pause temporary and attributed it to “a routine review to uphold our commitment to high quality laboratory testing.”

“We anticipate some of these tests will be available through CDC labs again in the coming weeks. In the meantime, CDC stands ready to support our state and local partners to access the public health testing they need,” said Andrew Nixon of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the CDC.

CDC’s laboratory operations were faulted during the COVID-19 pandemic, and they were the subject of a subsequent work group’s review. The agency has been evaluating its testing since 2024, Becker said.

But there can be other reasons for taking tests offline, including staffing issues, he noted.

The pausing of lab testing comes in the wake of the dramatic downsizing of the CDC in the last year through layoffs, retirements, resignations and the nonrenewal of temporary appointments. Staffing fell by 20% to 25%, according to different estimates, and was felt across the agency — including in the laboratories.

The poxvirus and rabies labs lost about half their prior staff, and the CDC’s malaria branch was gutted even more, according to the National Public Health Coalition, an organization of former and current CDC workers that formed in the wake of the downsizing.

Some of the paused testing focuses on common infections for which commercial testing is available, like Epstein-Barr virus, and the varicella zoster virus behind chickenpox and shingles. But also on the list is testing for some more exotic agents, like the for parasitic worms responsible for “snail fever” and for the virus that causes “sloth fever.”

Some specialized state labs, like those in the New York and California, have the ability to pick up the slack while CDC tests are on pause, Becker said.

He called the pauses “concerning, only if it’s permanent.”

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CDC to slash infectious-disease funding for states; California impact uncertain

LA Times — Fri, 28 Mar 2025 22:00:00 +0000

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has notified the California Department of Public Health it is suspending grants it had provided to support the state’s infectious-disease response during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The directive was sent to all 50 states and will cancel roughly $12 billion in funding. California officials said they couldn’t immediately say how the cuts would affect state services.

“We are working to evaluate the impact of these actions,” Erica Pan, the state department’s director and state public health officer, said in a statement.

The funding was awarded during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic to aid the state with its respiratory virus monitoring, testing and response, immunizations and vaccines for children, and to help address health disparities, Pan said.

The cuts were reported earlier by NBC News, which quoted a statement from U.S. Department of Health and Human Services spokesman Andrew Nixon saying that the “COVID-19 pandemic is over, and H.H.S. will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a nonexistent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago.”

It is unclear how much funding the state had been awarded and how much is now being pulled, but a 2023 news release shows that the CDC awarded the state a $37-million grant to help strengthen the state’s health infrastructure, workforce and data systems.

According to the release, the grant award’s start date was Dec. 1, 2022, and was set to last through Nov. 30, 2027.

It couldn’t immediately be determined how much of the award has already been spent, but much of it was designated to support county health departments, including the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, Riverside County Department of Public Health, Long Beach Health Department, Orange County Health Department and San Bernardino County Department of Public Health.

In addition, two other large awards were provided by the CDC to California in the immediate wake of the COVID pandemic: a $555-million grant during 2020 and $1.7 billion as part of the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2021.

The state Department of Public Health didn’t immediately respond for a request for comment on what programs could be affected by the CDC’s cancellation of funding, nor how the state’s infectious-disease monitoring, testing, response and immunization programs could be affected.

The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health received notices from the federal government that COVID-associated funding was going to be rescinded, a spokeswoman for the department said. It also received an informal notice from the state that COVID-related grants for vaccination services probably would be terminated.

“In total, these actions to rescind … COVID-associated funding will impact more than $45 million in core L.A. County Public Health funding,” the spokeswoman said. “Much of this funding supports disease surveillance, public health lab services, outbreak investigations, infection control activities at healthcare facilities, and data transparency. We are working to determine the impacts of the announcement of the loss of this funding.”

According to 2025-26 state budget figures, Gov. Gavin Newsom allocated $5.1 billion to the state’s health department; about $2.3 billion of that comes from federal funding.

Although Congress initially authorized the money for state health programs as part of its COVID relief bills, it has since been allowed to be targeted to other programs, such as testing and surveillance for other respiratory viruses.

California has been ground zero for the H5N1 bird flu since last March. Thirty-eight people in the state have been infected with the virus, most of them dairy workers who were exposed working with infected cows or milk. However, two of the people were children; the cause of their infection has not been determined.

The virus has also infected 756 dairy herds; more than 75% of the state’s total dairy herds.

In addition, there have been eight measles cases since the beginning of the year, in addition to thousands of seasonal flu, COVID-19, norovirus and RSV cases.

Pan said the state will continue to advance public health and work to protect people.

“All Californians deserve to live in healthy and thriving communities, which is the role of public health,” she wrote in her statement, saying her department is “committed to seeking the resources required to support the critical, lifesaving infrastructure needed to keep people healthy and protect them against infectious disease, vaccine-preventable diseases and health emergencies.”

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Along with illegal immigrants, infectious diseases are crossing America’s Border

Contributed — Mon, 03 Mar 2025 17:00:00 +0000

For the past four years, our national borders have been as porous as a sieve, allowing thousands of illegal aliens to cross into America every day. Few are screened for criminal backgrounds, useful skills, intentions toward America, or infectious diseases.

The criminal toll from invading gang members is significant, but not every border crosser is a thief, rapist, pedophile, or murderer.

However, everyone crossing the border could be a carrier of an infectious disease — a walking petri dish of bacteria and other microorganisms that may cause far greater problems than the criminal aliens.

I am using the description “illegal alien” instead of the more woke terms of “migrant,” “refugee,” “visitor,” “undocumented,” or “immigrant” as a hat tip to President Bill Clinton, who, in his 1995 State of the Union address, stated, “All Americans … are rightly disturbed by the large numbers of illegal aliens entering our country. The jobs they hold might otherwise be occupied by citizens or legal immigrants.”

He was spot on, so I honored him by using his words. I suspect most Democrats and their media stenographers will object to the term “alien” despite it being used by one of their party’s heroes.
Most corporate media portray illegal aliens as pure and innocent as the wind-driven snow, overlooking the significant public health implications.

This article highlights New York City as the leading destination for illegal aliens, where the incidence of TB is 2.5 times higher than the national average. Additionally, 89 percent of TB patients in NYC are foreign-born.
The Southern Medical Association states, “Illegal immigration may expose Americans to diseases that have been virtually eradicated but are highly contagious, as in the case of TB.” ProPublica reviewed ICE detention centers and found staff often break strict rules for testing contagious diseases.

According to the CDC, symptoms of TB include a persistent cough, weakness, fatigue, weight loss, and night sweats. Most everyone crossing the Mexican desert, hiding from authorities, and having limited food and water for weeks on end will have these symptoms. Who gets screened? Everyone or no one? The latter is likely the case based on the sheer volume of immigrants crossing during the Biden administration.

Because they are ignorant of good hygiene measures, children are great transmitters of infectious diseases. Just ask any parent with children in daycare or elementary school.

Once across the U.S. border, immigrant children are sent to New York City, California, Denver, and other cities and states. What a perfect way to disseminate an infectious disease, especially since the children will again be living in close quarters in makeshift detention centers, coughing and sneezing on each other.

So far, I have only been discussing standard TB, which is treatable with a variety of medications. What about “multi-drug-resistant TB” or, even worse, “extensively drug-resistant TB”? Both, according to the CDC, are significantly more challenging to treat.

The global prevalence of active or latent TB is 25 percent. The CDC reports, “The TB rate among non–U.S.-born persons was 15 times the rate among U.S.-born persons.” Furthermore, Latin American slums are “a breeding ground for disease,” with TB being just one example.

TB is just one of many diseases that can cross the border into the US. Other infectious diseases, such as scabies, MRSA staph infections, hepatitis, measles, and chicken pox, can also be introduced. Researchers at Boston Medical Center found that “Immigrants have ongoing links with populations in their countries of origin that may provide a channel through which infectious diseases potentially can be introduced to new areas.”

Scientific American warns of tropical diseases that are “endemic in warmer, wetter, and poorer areas of the world, often closer to the equator,” such as schistosomiasis, Chagas disease, dengue, and Chikungunya, making their way to the U.S. as “immigration may become a greater disease pipeline.”

Polio has been eradicated in much of the world but remains endemic in three countries: Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Nigeria. Additionally, polio has reemerged in Venezuela, as reported by CNN. Currently, 770,000 Venezuelan migrants are living in the U.S.

Standard legal immigration into the U.S. requires a medical examination, which includes a review of medical history, a physical examination, a chest X-ray, and blood tests for syphilis. Blood testing and chest X-rays are not required for children and teenagers. What about illegal immigration? It’s like closing and locking your home windows while leaving the front door wide open.

Remember the scene from The Godfather Part II where young Vito Corleone arrived at Ellis Island with suspected smallpox? He was placed in quarantine until he was deemed healthy enough to enter New York City. Under previous policies, Vito would have been sent to various U.S. cities and enrolled in overcrowded public schools, coughing and spreading tuberculosis or smallpox to his entire classroom and their families.

Fortunately, a new sheriff and a posse of cabinet-level deputies are in town, many of whom understand infectious diseases and the necessity of protecting Americans from needless illness and death. While Tren de Aragua and criminal gang members make the news, don’t overlook the silent microscopic killers out there, which are just as dangerous, if not more so, to American citizens.

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