18 State Salmonella Outbreak from Fosters Chicken Parts--UPDATE
Wired notes that CDC officials couldnt help track the current salmonella outbreak which involves analyzing microbes in an attempt to link cases that occurred states apart even if they wanted to. Scientists have been locked out of their offices, labs, and email accounts.
The current shutdown is already one of the largest and longest in history, and its also coinciding with the beginning of flu season another one of the CDCs multi-state tracking efforts.
UPDATE
On Tuesday afternoon, CDC officials confirmed that some furloughed staff are coming back to work to help with the salmonella outbreak. Nearly a dozen people who typically work on foodborne analysis and outbreak response are now allowed to do their jobs again. Now that were into our second week, we have to consider the possibility of this being a longer-term shutdown. Were reevaluating some of the roles, a CDC spokeswoman explained, saying that the low staffing levels have come to a head in the agencys foodborne illness department. About 9,000 of the CDCs 13,000 workers remain furloughed.
http://www.nationofchange.org/there-s-widespread-salmonella-outbreak-public-health-officials-can-t-work-during-shutdown-1381320927