Over 3m people in US benefit from Facebook news feed on COVID-19 vaccine

13 / 04 / 2021

By Marwa Nassar - -

Over 3 million people in the US have benefited from Facebook news feed on vaccine eligibility information from their states or local provider.

Now that states in the US are opening COVID-19 vaccine eligibility to all adults, Facebook is helping connect people with state-specific information from local health departments about COVID-19 vaccines and how people can get vaccinated.

To do this, Facebook is replicating its state-by-state strategies it used during the US 2020 presidential election since both voting and the vaccine rollout are handled by state and local authorities. Just as the company ran state-specific notifications in News Feed about registering to vote and voting by mail ahead of each state’s deadlines, Facebook is tailoring COVID-19 vaccine notifications to coincide with each state opening their eligibility to all adults so it doesn’t promote vaccines before everyone is eligible. It is ultimately rolling out these notifications nationally across the US and globally as more countries expand vaccinations.

Since February in the US, we’ve shown people ages 65 and older a notification in News Feed that links to their state website to see who can get a vaccine and how to make an appointment. Now that states are expanding vaccine eligibility, we’re starting to show notifications to all eligible adults with the latest information.

As part of Facebook’s work to help people get vaccinated, it is working with state health departments to connect people with reliable information about whether and when they’re eligible to get a COVID-19 vaccine in their state.

From January through March, over 3 million people in the US clicked through our News Feed promotions and our COVID-19 Information Center to visit their state health website or local provider. And showing people this information right in their News Feed is having a positive impact on vaccine registrations. For example, West Virginia’s Department of Health and Human Resources reported that their vaccine registrations increased significantly after Facebook started running these notifications.

Facebook is also running these News Feed notifications in nearly 20 countries with more following soon. These notifications link to the country’s ministry of health website for more information about the vaccines and booking an appointment.