CDC leadership – With millions expected to travel to 11 U.S. World Cup host cities, public health officials are preparing for infectious threats. But the effort is playing out alongside a federal pullback that has left the CDC without a permanent director, its staffing reduced
By the time the first fans land in the United States, the pressure won’t just be on stadium security or ticket lines. It will be on health systems stretched thin and a CDC that, for now, is navigating an unusual kind of uncertainty—while major sporting events and global outbreaks collide.
In the coming weeks, millions of soccer fans and tourists are expected to travel to 11 U.S. cities hosting the World Cup. The tournament’s arrival comes as the Ebola outbreak races through Central Africa and as a nationwide measles outbreak continues to raise alarms.
Federal, state and local public health officials say the risk to the American public from Ebola is low. Still, experts warn that the country’s retreat from international public health work—paired with new pressure from mass travel—has left the U.S. more vulnerable than it needs to be.
Tom Frieden, the former CDC director who oversaw the agency during the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak, described the current moment as a “perfect storm” of challenges for travel, trade and health workers.
The World Cup’s scale is hard to ignore: 48 teams are participating in the 2026 World Cup. and 39 will train in the United States. That means international travelers are arriving as the CDC. the nation’s public health backbone. does not have a full-time leader. and the agency has faced devastating cuts. The Trump administration’s sweeping cuts in the federal workforce have reduced CDC staff by nearly 30% since last year.
Jennifer Nuzzo, a professor of epidemiology and director of the pandemic center at Brown University School of Public Health, said those federal reductions make planning harder.
“When you have a lot of people coming from all over the world gathering for extended periods of time. that is really ripe for health emergencies. ” Nuzzo said. “So it takes resources and a plan to be able to handle that. It takes resources to make sure hospitals are ready for an influx of patients above what they normally see.”.
Her warning lands at the same time the U.S. has stepped back from global health monitoring. The United States exited the World Health Organization and dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development. or USAID. which helped monitor infectious diseases and supplied personal protective gear to health workers around the globe.
Andrew Nixon. a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services. pushed back on the idea that staffing cuts are weakening the CDC’s ability to respond. In an emailed response. Nixon wrote that “Within hours of notification. the CDC mobilized resources. activated response operations. deployed personnel and resources to Africa. imposed travel restrictions. expanded traveler screening and contact tracing. enhanced hospital readiness and laboratory capacity. and supported the evacuation and care of exposed Americans.”.
Nixon also said the CDC is developing a dedicated World Cup data dashboard “to give state and local health departments enhanced visibility into disease trends both within and beyond their jurisdictions.”
In New York City. staff at the New York City Department of Health are working closely with CDC partners. according to Chantal Gomez. spokesperson for the agency. Gomez said that while funding cuts have left the CDC “under-resourced at a critical time. ” there are “some incredible staff at the CDC who are doing their best under difficult circumstances.”.
In Boston, Andew Lemos, associate communications director for the Boston Public Health Commission, said the agency is coordinating with both state and federal agencies, including the CDC, ahead of the World Cup.
Yet in Boston, the criticism did not stop. Dr. Bisola Ojikutu, commissioner of public health for the City of Boston, was critical of the Trump administration’s withdrawal of the United States from the World Health Organization, saying the shift has made the country less prepared.
“The current federal administration has made many misguided policy changes in recent years that have made our country less prepared to combat emerging public health threats and ultimately less safe. ” Ojikutu said. “The decision to leave the World Health Organization isolates our country and leaves us less equipped to protect the health and well-being of people in communities everywhere.”.
What preparedness looks like in practice can be seen in Houston, where the Democratic Republic of Congo’s team will play Portugal on June 17. There, public health officials are prepared for an influx of visitors.
The issue is not theoretical. Texas was thrust into national attention in 2014 after a man in Dallas died from Ebola and infected two of his nurses. With guidance from the CDC, Texas state health officials developed safeguards intended to prevent a repeat.
“We have a whole plan in place that I’m hoping we never get to use,” said Dr. Luis Ostrosky, chief of infectious diseases at UT Health Houston.
At the federal level. the CDC has imposed a 30-day travel restriction on visitors from regions with an Ebola outbreak. including Congo. Uganda and South Sudan. On May 22, HHS issued a directive temporarily preventing lawful permanent residents returning from Ebola-afflicted areas within the last 21 days. Returning visitors will be screened at U.S. airports in metro Houston, Atlanta, New York City or Washington DC.
U.S. officials also instructed players from Congo—who have been training in Europe—to isolate for 21 days before entering the United States. The travel restriction could affect attendance. Ostrosky said it is “very unlikely we’ll truly have people from the (Ebola outbreak) region here in Houston. unless they are U.S. nationals or permanent residents.”.
For public health officials, Ebola may be the headline, but it is not the only threat waiting behind it.
A more likely health risk when mass travelers congregate are illnesses such as COVID-19, the flu, RSV and norovirus, Ostrosky said. Another potential threat is measles.
West Texas was the epicenter of measles cases in the United States in 2025. This year, U.S. measles cases have surpassed the number of infections in 2025, which was the largest, deadliest outbreak since measles was declared eliminated in the U.S. in 2000.
Measles infections can strain public health agencies. One example from Rhode Island: public health workers had to contact and follow up with more than 40 people tied to one measles case.
Nuzzo said tracking down a measles case linked to soccer matches, hotels or practice facilities at any of the U.S. World Cup host cities would be a logistical nightmare.
The struggle is not just about threats—it is about capacity, and the picture is shaped by how the CDC is being run right now.
On a recent all-hands call with employees at the CDC. Jay Bhattacharya. the current director of the National Institutes of Health and the most recent among a rotating cast of leadership fill-ins. said he could no longer serve as an acting director. The reason. according to an employee on the call. was legal: President Donald Trump had not formally nominated a permanent pick to the Senate. and under federal law an official can only serve for 210 days in an acting capacity. Therefore. the employee said. “he would be acting in the capacity of the director or some weird legal term like that.”.
The employee, who was on the call and granted anonymity to speak freely, compared the situation to an episode of “The Office,” the satirical television series making light of cringeworthy office moments.
That leadership gap is happening as the country tries to keep two diseases at bay: hantavirus and Ebola. A senior employee said the agency is better prepared than during the Covid-19 pandemic—for example. with technology in place to scale rapidly—but the “lack of staff and loss of experience” continues to be an issue.
That employee said the CDC’s actual response would remain unchanged, adding, “Our process is our process regardless of who is on top.”
Another CDC employee echoed a similar view. saying that “In some ways. I think CDC is better prepared now — at least in terms of infrastructure and processes. ” but that “People is a different question. We’ve lost key experts, and many of those remaining are burned out. And we don’t have the same levels of ties for strong international coordination and cooperation.”.
Frieden said a lack of a full-time director during an Ebola outbreak can weigh on staff. He said lacking a full-time director during an Ebola outbreak can “without a doubt” weigh on rank-and-file workers.
“This has obviously been an enormously difficult time for the agency,” Frieden said. “CDC staff have been vilified by their own secretary. CDC staff have been fired, or have seen unscientific ideological opinions overrule scientific expertise.”
The shift away from the World Health Organization is central to the debate. The United States withdrew from the WHO in January, ending a partnership that began in 1948.
HHS said the U.S. carried a disproportionate share of the organization’s financial burden for decades. Instead, HHS said it would “engage partners directly and deploy resources efficiently.”
The State Department said it has signed 32 bilateral global health memorandums of understanding with Angola. Bolivia. Botswana. Burkina Faso. Burundi. Cambodia. Cameroon. Côte d’Ivoire. the Democratic Republic of the Congo. the Dominican Republic. El Salvador. Eswatini. Ethiopia. Guatemala. Guinea. Honduras. Kenya. Lesotho. Liberia. Madagascar. Malawi. Mozambique. Niger. Nigeria. Panama. Papua New Guinea. the Philippines. Rwanda. Senegal. Sierra Leone. Tajikistan and Uganda.
The signed MOUs include provisions for real-time sharing of global health security and disease surveillance data, which a State Department spokesperson said is “exactly what’s needed to track emerging threats like hantavirus and Ebola.”
One example cited: the MOU with Rwanda includes $10 million to expand disease outbreak surveillance and establishing a biothreat radar system that monitors potential outbreaks in the broader East and Central Africa region.
Frieden said the idea of individual countries taking more responsibility for their health and public health contracting is a good one. But he said it is difficult to execute during an outbreak such as Ebola.
“You can’t do it overnight and hope that it’s going to succeed, because it won’t,” Frieden said. “It will just result in a massive disruption of services.”
Taken together, the facts describe a U.S. public health system preparing for a stadium-sized challenge while dealing with internal leadership churn. staffing reductions and a pullback from international coordination—at the same time Ebola threats overseas and measles spread at home keep forcing the clock forward.
CDC World Cup 2026 Ebola measles public health Tom Frieden staffing cuts federal workforce World Health Organization USAID HHS travel restrictions hantavirus