About 1,800 CDC staffers and others gathered in April in a hotel in Atlanta, where the CDC is headquartered, for a conference focused on epidemiological investigations and strategies.
On April 27, the last day of the conference, several people notified organizers that they had tested positive for COVID-19. The CDC and the Georgia Department of Public Health worked together to survey attendees to try to figure out how many people had tested positive.
"The goals were to learn more about transmission that occurred and add to our understanding as we transition to the next phase of COVID-19 surveillance and response," the CDC said in a May 26 statement.
Approximately 80 percent of attendees filled out the survey. Among those, 181 said they tested positive for COVID-19.
Every person who reported testing positive was vaccinated, a CDC spokesperson told The Epoch Times via email.
Nearly all respondents—99.4 percent—to the survey had received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose. And "there were very few unvaccinated attendees in general," the spokesperson said.
Officials did not break down the vaccinated between those who had received a dose of the updated bivalent vaccines and those who had not. They were also not able to say how many people among those who tested positive work for the CDC.
"The survey did not ask about place of employment and responses were anonymous, so we are not able to answer this question," the CDC spokesperson said.
About 360 people did not respond to the survey, so the actual outbreak may have been larger.
