CBS News Reports — At the worst possible moment, the watchdogs have been muzzled.

Every single full-time employee in the CDC‘s Vessel Sanitation Program — the agency’s frontline defense against floating petri dishes — is now off the job, multiple officials tell CBS News, gutting the government’s ability to investigate outbreaks and conduct health inspections on cruise ships. Only a skeleton crew of 12 U.S. Public Health Service officers remains.

The decision has baffled CDC officials for one glaring reason: taxpayers weren’t even footing the bill. Cruise ship companies pay for the program through fees — a self-sustaining system designed to ensure large vessels are inspected at least twice a year. And now, it’s been decimated.

Even the epidemiologist charged with leading the agency’s outbreak response on cruise ships was swept up in the layoffs, multiple CDC officials confirmed.

The timing couldn’t be more catastrophic.

The U.S. is currently battling a record surge of norovirus, largely driven by a new, highly contagious strain of the vicious stomach bug. At least a dozen outbreaks have already erupted on cruise ships this year — most from norovirus — with some making headlines for sickening dozens, even hundreds of passengers in a single voyage. For context, there were only 18 total outbreaks reported for all of last year.

And here’s the kicker: agency staff were in the middle of responding to two active outbreaks when they were abruptly terminated, an official said.

The cuts are part of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s sweeping purge across the nation’s public health agencies, which has already eliminated around 2,400 CDC employees.

An HHS official attempted to downplay the disaster, claiming the cruise ship work will continue since many commissioned Public Health Service officers in the program were spared. “Critical programs in the CDC will continue under Secretary Kennedy’s vision to streamline HHS to better serve Americans,” the official said in a statement.

But multiple CDC officials warn that’s dangerously optimistic — if not outright misleading.

“None of the civilian staff are there to support them. So I don’t know how long they will be able to sustain their mission alone without any support,” said Erik Svendsen, who was the head of the CDC’s Division of Environmental Health Science and Practice before it was eliminated entirely.

His division oversaw the vessel sanitation program — along with other critical teams like the CDC’s lead poisoning experts, who remain off the job despite Kennedy’s suggestion last week that he might reinstate them.

At its peak, the Vessel Sanitation Program could field around two dozen staff, said a CDC official who spoke on condition of anonymity. But even before the cuts, the team was struggling with staffing shortages. Now? It’s been hollowed out.

“Affected services include outbreak investigations, coordination with state and local health departments, follow-up on lab-confirmed cases of acute gastroenteritis after travel, and communications such as website updates,” the CDC official said in a message.

Only one epidemiologist remains on the team to investigate outbreaks — and that person is still in the early stages of their training.

Nearly 200 cruise ship inspections were conducted by the program last fiscal year. Each new inspector takes around six months to train. Six months of expertise, knowledge, and safety protocols — now vaporized.

These inspectors are tasked with checking that ships aren’t cutting corners on medical centers, water systems, and food safety. For many vessels, the CDC effectively serves as the only health department regulating these critical areas. Without them, who’s watching the watchdogs?

Similar to challenges facing other federal inspection teams now grappling with cutbacks, the layoffs to support staff will also saddle remaining inspectors with more administrative work — directly detracting from time that should be spent on inspections and outbreak investigations.

A CDC official noted that recruiting for the team was already difficult, given the demanding schedule of constant travel to inspect ships and respond to outbreaks. Now, with the program gutted, the cruise industry faces a dangerous new reality: more ships, more sickness, and fewer eyes on the problem.

This is a developing story. CBS News will continue to follow the fallout from these sweeping cuts.