The Texas Department of State Health Department is expected to lose millions in funding as the government’s Department of Efficiency plans to cut another cut.
Doge is planning to cut hundreds of millions of dollars from two U.S. Department of Health and Human Services grants, including funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to help state, city and county health departments fight infections.
In a statement, the US Department of Health and Human Services said the funds to be cut are related to Covid-19, but in Texas these dollars are also being used to combat the ongoing measles outbreak.
Brad Burt, who covers the outbreak of KTTZ in Lubbock, said it is unclear how local health organizations will affect the cuts.
“It seems like a completed transaction from what we see from the Texas Department of Health. They’re telling the communities that are receiving these grants to stop funding right away,” he said. “They said there would be no additional costs as of March 24th.”
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Burt said the money is being used to support local responses to measles.
“In Lubbock, grants were primarily used to pay temporary staff,” he said. “Epidemiologists helping with vaccinations, people helping to cover the work of others pulled to accommodate new patients coming for the measles vaccine, and testing and treatment at that frontline.”
Some health departments in other states say they are ready to fire epidemiologists and data scientists. Burt said Texas has yet to make an official announcement of this kind.
“We’re still waiting for what the full impact of these cuts will be,” he said. “But we know that other states have said this could lead to a decline in staff, and that the ability to deal with more than Covid-19 or measles is being applied by some basic health organizations in response to many illnesses across the country.”
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Meanwhile, the outbreak of measles continues to spread.
“We’ve seen it (and we’ve seen it) and there’s been a pretty consistent increase over the past few weeks,” Burt said. “They said early on that this could last for a while, and I think so.
“We are hoping for new numbers today, but the last count has exceeded 300 in Texas alone, who have tested positive for measles since the outbreak began in late February. Hospitalizations have been around 40 in the past few weeks.
