RFK Jr.'s HHS cuts weaken World Cup disease preparedness, despite ongoing expert-led wastewater efforts

The 2026 FIFA World Cup is a massive stress test for public health systems across North America, but the federal infrastructure built to detect and contain outbreaks is being deliberately hollowed out. According to Reuters and BioPharma Dive, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. oversaw plans that have already cut 2,400 jobs at the CDC and 3,500 at the FDA as part of a 10,000-person reduction at HHS. These cuts directly undermine the CDC's ability to track infectious diseases that will inevitably emerge when millions of fans gather this summer.

A critical early-warning tool, the CDC's National Wastewater Surveillance System (NWSS), is newly at risk. A Trump administration budget plan would slash its funding from roughly $125 million per year to about $25 million, though the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2026 (H.R. 7148), signed February 3, appears to have averted immediate elimination per a February 23 Water Online report. Expert-led wastewater monitoring for the World Cup is still being conducted — Reuters reported in June 2026 that health experts are actively screening wastewater — but this is a separate, nongovernmental initiative that does not replace the federal surveillance capacity being dismantled.

The predictable result is a fragmented response where outbreaks that could have been caught early go undetected, hitting low-income communities and communities of color hardest — the same communities that already face worse health outcomes due to systemic inequities.