The Mills administration is set to spend $130,000 on a taxpayer-funded public service announcement (PSA) campaign pushing Maine parents to get their children vaccinated, while falsely claiming that COVID-19 vaccines prevent infection.

In a request to waive competitive bidding issued on Thursday, the Maine Department of Health and Human Services and Center for Disease Control outlined their plan to pay the Maine Association of Broadcasters $130,000 to broadcast PSAs on television and radio through June 2026 about the “importance of receiving vaccines on time.”

“The public is not generally well educated on the need for children to receive all their immunizations on time, or the need for adult vaccination,” the Mills administration grant coordinators wrote in their request.

“This results in children and adults not being vaccinated and not being protected from vaccine-preventable diseases, especially COVID-19,” they wrote.

The grant request falsely refers to COVID-19 as a “vaccine-preventable” disease, despite the CDC itself admitting that the vaccines do not prevent infection.

In the most recent high-profile example of the vaccines failing to prevent infection, President Joe Biden this week tested positive for COVID, despite being “vaccinated and boosted,” according to White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.

The proposed state PSA campaign is intended, according to the Mills administration, to “educate the public about the importance of receiving vaccines on time and encourage parents to bring their children to a healthcare provider to get vaccinated.”

Last month the Maine Wire reported on the Maine CDC seeking to spend $200,000 on their own marketing campaign intended to “decrease hesitancy” towards COVID-19 and flu vaccines.