Nearly half of the databases that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention used to update regularly — surveillance systems that tracked public health information like Covid vaccination rates and hospitalizations for respiratory syncytial virus — have been paused without explanation, according to new research.
The findings, published Monday in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, indicate that at the start of 2025, the CDC maintained 82 databases that were updated at least monthly. But by the end of October, the study found, 38 had gone stale, with 34 showing no new entries at all in the previous six months.
“These unexplained pauses started predominantly in March and April 2025, shortly after Mr. Trump assumed the presidency and Mr. Kennedy was confirmed as Secretary of Health and Human Services,” the researchers wrote.
Although the CDC is perhaps best known for issuing public health advisories and recommendations, the agency also plays a key role as a national record-keeper, tracking the spread of infections and uptake of vaccines in as close to real time as possible.
But the CDC appears to be backing away from that part of its work, the new research suggests. The study found that nearly 90% of the paused databases were related to vaccinations.
As examples, study author Dr. Jeremy Jacobs, an assistant professor at Vanderbilt University, pointed to one database that monitored weekly Covid vaccinations among pregnant women and another that tracked Covid vaccinations among all U.S. adults (with breakdowns based on demographics and geographical region). Both were last updated in late April, he said.
Other out-of-date databases looked at respiratory illnesses treated in emergency departments and the use of an injectable drug that can protect infants from RSV.
“It’s curious that all these changes are primarily, and almost exclusively, in the area of vaccination,” said Noel Brewer, another study author and a professor of public health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
“On the face of this, this all looks fairly deliberate, but we don’t really know why these websites went silent,” he said.
Andrew Nixon, a spokesperson for the Health and Human Services Department, said the CDC reports Covid and RSV activity through its respiratory virus surveillance systems and reports weekly flu activity through a database called FluView.
“Changes to individual dashboards or update schedules reflect routine data quality and system management decisions, not political direction,” Nixon said in a statement. “Under this administration, public health data reporting is driven by scientific integrity, transparency, and accuracy.”
Without current information from these databases, several public health experts said, it is more difficult to know what vaccination coverage looks like on the national or regional level — which, consequently, can make it harder to deal with new outbreaks.
Dr. Lisa Lee, senior associate vice president for research and innovation at Virginia Tech, spent 14 years at the CDC, including as chief science officer in the agency’s office of surveillance and epidemiology. She said local health officials often rely on CDC databases to guide their responses to public health crises.
“If we, for example, see wild-type polio again in our country because we have reduced uptake of vaccine, that is the surveillance system that’s telling us this information,” she said.
Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, chief executive officer of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, wrote in an editorial also published Monday in Annals of Internal Medicine that the lapse in updates — whether intentional or not — demonstrates “a profound disregard for human life.”
“The evidence is damning: The administration’s antivaccine stance has interrupted the reliable flow of the data we need to keep Americans safe from preventable infections,” she said. Marrazzo served as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases until September, when Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired her. She is suing Kennedy and other Trump administration officials, alleging she was let go in part because of her strong defense of vaccines.
In the new study, the authors — a team of public health and medical experts and one law professor — suggest that the CDC may have stopped updating the databases due to reductions in its workforce, budget cuts or shifting attitudes about vaccines among federal health officials.
Their findings reflect a larger trend of changes to the CDC’s website, some involving unreliable information that contradicts scientific consensus.
“This is especially concerning, given the broader context. There’s misinformation about vaccines and vaccine safety being disseminated through official channels at HHS by non-health professionals,” Lee said.
In November, a web page that once unequivocally stated that vaccines do not cause autism was rewritten to say that “studies have not ruled out the possibility.” The message flew in the face of decades of scientific research that has found no link between autism and vaccines. Prior to that, the CDC removed language pertaining to gender identity and diversity, equity, inclusion, including information on HIV and contraception.
The website changes are part of a broader overhaul of the country’s public health agencies under Kennedy’s leadership. In the year since he became health secretary, the U.S. has stopped recommending routine Covid shots for healthy kids, slashed funding for mRNA vaccine research and overhauled the childhood vaccine schedule to include fewer universal recommendations. Kennedy also fired the CDC’s previous committee of vaccine advisers and replaced them with a group that has largely expressed skepticism of the shots. In December, the new panel rolled back a decadeslong recommendation to vaccinate all newborns against hepatitis B.
“It pains me to say that you need to really look at some of these recommendations with caution,” Marrazzo said. “If I were a parent, I would trust my board-certified pediatrician, who hopefully is a member of, or aligned with, the American Academy of Pediatrics.”
The academy on Monday released its own guidance for childhood vaccines, which is similar to the schedule the CDC recommended before Kennedy announced sweeping changes earlier this month.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
