Work with raccoons and need a rabies test? Don't send samples to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for at least the next couple of weeks.
The agency has temporarily paused testing for a host of infectious diseases, including poxviruses, various parasites, and lymphocytic choriomeningitis, a rodent-borne virus that can cause meningitis.
Testing is a vital aspect of disease surveillance. It allows public health officials to identify outbreaks early or track how a disease is spreading through a region. State and local public health labs, particularly those in smaller jurisdictions, rely on the CDC for testing, because they lack the staff and resources to handle every possible test that might be required.
The temporary pause comes as public health infrastructure in the United States roils with uncertainty: Hundreds of CDC workers have been laid off or quit since President Donald Trump took office, while state and local public health agencies face cuts to their federal funding.
But the testing pause is unrelated to these challenges, said Scott Becker, MS, the Association of Public Health Laboratories' (APHL’s) chief executive officer.
There have been previous pauses as the CDC has been making a concerted effort to evaluate the quality of its testing since 2024. Becker told CIDRAP News it's good policy for the agency to assess its processes periodically.
"They've been very transparent about this all along,” he said, adding that the menu of tests the CDC runs is “enormous.”
Concerns about coordinated response
That's not to say that turmoil at the federal level has left CDC laboratory operations unscathed. Becker noted that during last year's 43-day government shutdown, the agency performed only emergency testing.
The CDC does not need to perform every test of every infectious disease specimen itself, Sarah Henn, MD, MPH, the chief health officer at Whitman-Walker Health in Washington, DC, said via email. However, the country relies on the federal government to deliver a coordinated response to disease surveillance and communicate infectious disease data clearly and consistently.
“Right now, it is not clear that this level of coordination is in place, and that uncertainty is concerning,” she said.
It is not clear that this level of coordination is in place, and that uncertainty is concerning.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the CDC’s parent agency, didn't specify which aspects of the paused tests it was assessing. But HHS press secretary Emily G. Hilliard told CIDRAP News that some of the paused tests are expected to be available 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 Hilliard in an email statement.
Based on previous testing pauses, Becker predicted it may take several months before all recently suspended tests are back online.
Pause could delay disease detection
But where to send that rabies sample? In the interim, commercial and larger state-level public health laboratories are picking up the slack. That includes New York State Department of Health's Wadsworth Center, which told CIDRAP News that Wadsworth's capacity to assist during this pause was considerable, "but not infinite.”
Lab officials warned that the CDC’s pause could delay detection, compromising the effectiveness of national disease surveillance.
CDC stands ready to support our state and local partners to access the public health testing they need.
A strong public health system has redundancy so that testing is not limited to just one or two labs, said Ewa King, PhD, the APHL’s chief program officer. However, public health agencies are used to working with each other,
“Sending a test request to, let's say, New York Wadsworth Center or a California state laboratory, it does not feel very strange,” she said.
