The Trump administration has fired staff who were working on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s bird flu response as part of its mass layoffs at the Department of Health and Human Services, according to a source familiar with the situation. The Tuesday firings, which many employees learned of as they attempted to enter office buildings and were denied access, are part of the administration’s effort to shrink the size of the federal government.
Health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said he will fire 10,000 people across the agencies under the health department.
Among those fired on Tuesday were leadership and administrative staff at the FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine, according to the source, who did not know the exact number of fired employees.