It’s critical to reach people at the local level when facing challenges such as public health crises. As part of our ongoing effort to connect people to authoritative information about COVID-19 and vaccines, we recently launched COVID-19 Announcements. The new tool helps US state and local public health departments share urgent COVID-19 updates in local communities.

“Aurora is a large and diverse community, and spreading the word about the safety and availability of COVID vaccines has been crucial to our community’s healing and recovery. Our staff have used Facebook’s COVID Announcement Tool to reach residents more broadly and to overcome common communications barriers, certainly resulting in more people getting vaccinated and more safety for our city as a whole.” – Mayor Mike Coffman, Aurora, Colorado

When authorities mark posts as COVID-19 Announcements, we expand their reach so more people see them. We also send notifications about these posts to local community members and make the information visible in the COVID-19 Information Center.

“Thanks to Facebook’s support in helping us promote COVID-19 information on social media, Alabama residents have been kept informed about updated health guidance regarding mask wearing, social distancing, handwashing, and vaccine distribution. We have seen the impact this support has had in reaching our community at this critical time.” – Alabama Department of Public Health 

Since launching this feature in the US in May, we’ve sent out more than 183 million notifications driving people to COVID-19 announcements from their state and local governments. 

“Since the very beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Linn County Public Health has been committed and devoted to providing ongoing updates about the disease — and more recently about the vaccines — based on current science and data to our neighbors. Facebook’s COVID-19 Announcements tool has helped inform our community of important information. The most recent use of the announcement tool helped us reach nearly 18,000 people, and approximately 2,000 individuals engaged with the post.” – Linn County Public Health Department

Access to timely, local information is critical in our fight against COVID-19. That’s why we built the COVID-19 Announcements tool to help public officials meet their communities where they already are — on Facebook. And we’re glad to see it’s helping people stay informed and supporting health leaders and public officials in their work to vaccinate billions of people against COVID-19.

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