CDC (left), Donald Trump (agencies)

Hundreds of employees at the US centers for disease control and prevention (CDC) who were laid off on Friday night have been reinstated, after officials said the terminations were triggered by an “incorrect notification,” reported CNN.According to the American federation of government employees (AFGE), around 1,300 CDC staff received layoff notices late Friday, but roughly 700 were reinstated on Saturday after the agency discovered an error, while about 600 remain laid off.“The employees who received incorrect notifications were never separated from the agency and have all been notified that they are not subject to the reduction in force,” said Andrew Nixon, communications director for the US department of health and human services (HHS), as quoted by the news outlet. Among those reinstated were staff linked to the CDC’s morbidity and mortality weekly report, according to Dr Debra Houry, who recently resigned as the agency’s chief medical officer and deputy director. Houry and several senior officials had stepped down earlier in protest after the firing of recently confirmed CDC director Dr Susan Monarez.Athalia Christie, the CDC’s incident commander for the measles response, was also among those mistakenly terminated. The US has reported 1,563 measles cases since January, the highest number since the disease was declared eliminated 25 years ago.Employees reinstated include personnel from the national center for immunization and respiratory diseases, the global health center, and the public health infrastructure center, which manages more than $3 billion in grants for state and local health programs, said Dr Brian Castrucci, president of the de Beaumont Foundation, a nonprofit focused on public health workers.Officers from the CDC’s epidemic intelligence service (EIS) – known as “disease detectives” – were also mistakenly let go. A CDC official told reporters that “we think all staff and all officers are back,” noting the issue stemmed from a coding error in the layoff notices.However, workers from the CDC’s Washington office, violence prevention programmes, and the Office of the director of the injury center remain separated from the agency under the latest phase of the Trump administration’s reduction in force (RIF) initiative.Speaking late Friday, US President Donald Trump said he planned to fire “a lot” of federal workers, vowing to target those he claimed were aligned with the Democratic party.“We figure they started this thing, so they should be Democrat-oriented,” Trump said, blaming Democrats for the ongoing government shutdown. Trump did not provide details on what qualified the affected workers as “Democrat-oriented.”The legality of firing federal employees during a shutdown has been challenged in court. After the office of management and budget director Russell Vought posted “The RIFs have begun” on X, AFGE replied, “The lawsuit has been filed.”A court filing said more than 4,100 federal workers were affected across HHS, commerce, education, energy, housing and urban development, homeland security, and treasury departments.