US FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb has taken to Twitter in recent days to thank agency staff who are still working under the ongoing government shutdown and offered words of support to those who’ve been furloughed. Almost half of CDRH’s staff have been furloughed since Dec. 22 when President Trump and Congress couldn’t agree on a budget to keep the government running.
“I’m grateful for the thousands of #FDA employees who continue work on vital public health activities during the lapse in funding, such as drug shortages mitigation for life-sustaining drugs, food outbreaks, and surveillance of adverse events reports that could cause human harm,” said the commissioner in the first