Associated Press

By Betsy McKay

Better hope for no big outbreaks of hepatitis A, salmonella, or flu if the federal government shuts down.

A government shutdown will furlough 68% of staff – meaning 8,754 people — at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, according to a fiscal year 2014 “Contingency Staffing Plan for Operations in the Absence of Enacted Annual Appropriations” on the Department of Health and Human Services’ website.

That means no in-depth investigations to identify and link outbreaks that may be occurring simultaneously in multiple states, according to a CDC spokeswoman. While state public health investigators may detect outbreaks on their own territory, “we won’t be doing the cross-state consultation and laboratory work to link outbreaks that might cross state borders,” such as a hepatitis A outbreak earlier this year that sickened 162 people in 10 states, spokeswoman Barbara Reynolds said in an email. The CDC investigation helped link the infections to pomegranate seeds from Turkey…