The Trump administration has replaced the Biden-era COVID.gov website, which had emphasized nationwide vaccination efforts since 2021, with a new version focused on the lab leak theory.
The revamped website pivots away from vaccine promotion to highlight what it calls the “true origins” of COVID-19.
The original site stood as the centerpiece of what officials called “the largest vaccination program in our country’s history.” It connected Americans with over 90,000 vaccination locations and provided information on pandemic preparedness efforts. The Biden administration’s comprehensive action plan credited vaccines with saving over 3 million American lives and preventing 18 million hospitalizations.
The replacement website takes a markedly different approach. It argues that COVID-19 originated from a lab leak rather than natural transmission and criticizes previous public health messaging.
“The biological features in the virus are not found in nature,” the new site claims, emphasizing the role of the Wuhan SARS research lab in the pandemic’s origins.
This shift follows intelligence assessments from the Department of Energy and the FBI in 2023 that supported the lab leak theory as likely. The CIA under Trump’s administration has also endorsed this view.
The revamped site additionally challenges COVID-19 mitigation measures. It calls the six-foot social distancing guideline “arbitrary” and questions the efficacy of mask mandates.
The revised website now has a section addressing “COVID-19 Misinformation.”
“Public health officials often mislead the American people through conflicting messaging, knee-jerk reactions, and a lack of transparency. Most egregiously, the federal government demonized alternative treatments and disfavored narratives, such as the lab leak theory, in a shameful effort to coerce and control the American people’s health decisions,” per the website.
“When those efforts failed, the Biden Administration resorted to ‘outright censorship—coercing and colluding with the world’s largest social media companies to censor all COVID-19-related dissent,’” continues the website.
The new administration defends the changes as bringing transparency and reframing public understanding of the pandemic’s origins and the government’s response.