Over the summer, a government website that helped Americans find vaccines got a MAHA makeover. Then it stopped working altogether.
The Trump administration removed language from Vaccines.gov that said “Vaccines can help you stay healthy” on June 24, according to a NOTUS analysis of previous versions of the site cached by web.archive.org. It also cut the site’s FAQ section explaining “The best way to protect yourself and your loved ones is to get the vaccines recommended for you” and — most critically — changed the search tool that allowed users to enter their ZIP code to find vaccination sites in their area.
Now, the ZIP code search doesn’t work. A site banner on the page states: “The functionality of this website may be impacted while it is being updated.”
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Changes to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website linking vaccines to rising autism rates drew widespread criticism when they were made last week. But it appears that the agency has been quietly pulling back its online vaccination resources for much longer. The CDC did not give NOTUS a timeline for when Vaccines.gov would function again — nor did it answer repeated inquiries about the stated updates.
“As publicly stated on the website banner, the functionality of this website may be impacted while it is being updated,” a CDC spokesperson told NOTUS via email.
The changes to Vaccines.gov were made at a tumultuous moment for the CDC and U.S. vaccine policy. One day after the Trump administration removed information from the site, the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices — made up of a cadre of vaccine skeptics hand-selected by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — held its first meeting of the MAHA era.
Around six weeks later, the website was edited again to include the banner alerting users that the functionality might be impacted while the site is being updated, cached versions show.
Vaccines.gov was originally launched by the Biden administration in 2021. It grew out of a collaboration between the CDC and researchers at Boston Children’s Hospital, who had previously collaborated to develop the vaccination search engine VaccineFinder.org. That site remains active, but it’s unclear if its team is still receiving government funds. The website no longer sports the CDC’s logo.
John Brownstein, whose team at Boston Children’s ran Vaccinefinder.org, told the New York Times in 2021 that the project received around $1 million per year from the federal government to maintain the site, first from HHS, then from CDC directly beginning in 2017. He said at the time that they also received over $8 million to expand to include COVID-19 vaccines.
The most recent record of government funding for Vaccines.gov NOTUS was able to locate was a 2023 grant.
A spokesperson for Vaccinefinder.org told NOTUS via email that their organization ran Vaccines.gov until their funding contract ended in July.
“We are not aware of who at CDC maintains the website now,” the spokesperson said. They did not immediately respond to questions about whether the contract was canceled or not renewed. Brownstein and Boston Children’s Hospital did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
One former CDC official who requested anonymity to speak candidly said Vaccines.gov was formerly under the jurisdiction of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, but currently, “decisions are being made by CDC leadership/HHS leadership.”
“If it’s down, it would be because IRD was directed to take it down,” the official said.
Former NCIRD director Demetre Daskalakis confirmed that Vaccines.gov was a “CDC asset” that HHS “took over.”
“I have heard that they are planning to ‘update it’ and shudder to think what that will mean,” Daskalakis told NOTUS via email.
Federal, state and local health organizations have continued to refer to Vaccines.gov as a resource for people searching for vaccines — despite the fact that the website is a dead end.
“You can locate a vaccine site at https://www.vaccines.gov/search/,” the Department of Veterans Affairs website says on a page that was updated this month.
“Visit Vaccines.gov to: Find vaccination locations near you from your health department or pharmacies,” says a page on USA.gov that was updated last week.
Even HHS still advertises its own broken website on a page about where to get vaccinated against COVID-19, along with a texting service and number to call to find vaccination sites, both of which also appear to no longer be active.
The Trump administration has already made changes to other Biden-era health websites, including Covid.gov and Covidtests.gov, which used to host information about treatment, testing and vaccines.
Now they are about the controversial theory that the COVID-19 pandemic started in a Chinese lab.
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