The Trump Administration took down parts of some government websites as well as removed several health data sets on Friday, raising alarm among health care providers and researchers who use government data in their daily work.
Information about HIV was removed from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website. Late Friday, census.gov appeared to be down. Earlier in the afternoon, links to U.S. Census data sets sent users to the message, “an error occurred while processing this directive.” And research data from national surveys of American children called the “Youth Risk Behavioral Surveillance System” also wasn’t available on Friday.
Trump’s White House press office did not return requests for comment about the outages. President Trump issued an executive order on his first day in office instructing federal agencies to shut down diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, prompting agencies to start reviewing all the information on their websites.
On the CDC website Friday, webpages with detailed information for doctors working with HIV patients were not accessible. The link for the site tilted: “HIV Nexus: CDC Resources for Clinicians” generated a page-not-found message, so did the website link for “HIV Data.”
During the day on Friday, state public health officials and front line organizations that work with patients circulated messages about online resources going dark. In one email message sent to organizations in North Carolina and reviewed by TIME, local health care workers who rely on government data for their work were told to download any significant information. “We have been told the YRBS is unavailable and has been removed,” the email read, referring to the Youth Risk Behavioral Surveillance System. “We do not know how long it will be down or what will be impacted.”
—WITH REPORTING BY ANDREW CHOW
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