Iusitini Leon, Pacheco Gail, Schober Thomas
New Zealand Policy Research Institute, Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand.
SSM Popul Health. 2024 Mar 28;26:101657. doi: 10.1016/j.ssmph.2024.101657. eCollection 2024 Jun.
This study examines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on childhood vaccination coverage in New Zealand using population-wide administrative data. For each immunisation event from ages 6 weeks to 4 years, we compare vaccine uptake of children who became eligible for immunisation during the pandemic to earlier-born cohorts whose immunisations were due before the pandemic. We find that the initial phase of the pandemic had, on average, small or nil effects on timely immunisation at the four infancy events, but a large effect at the 4-year event of -15 percentage points. Nine months after eligibility, catch-up among the pandemic-affected cohorts was largely achieved for the infancy immunisations, but 4-year coverage remained 6 percentage points below pre-pandemic levels. Vaccine uptake at 4 years initially dropped most among children of European ethnicity and of non-beneficiary parents but catch-up quickly surpassed their Māori, Pacific, and beneficiary counterparts for whom sizeable gaps in coverage below pre-pandemic levels remained at the end of our observation period. The pandemic thus widened pre-existing inequalities in immunisation coverage.
本研究利用全人群行政数据，考察了新冠疫情对新西兰儿童疫苗接种覆盖率的影响。对于6周龄至4岁儿童的每次免疫接种事件，我们将在疫情期间符合免疫接种条件的儿童的疫苗接种率，与疫情前应接种疫苗的较早出生队列的儿童进行比较。我们发现，疫情初期，四次婴儿期免疫接种事件的及时接种率平均受到的影响较小或没有影响，但在4岁时的接种事件中受到的影响较大，下降了15个百分点。符合接种条件九个月后，受疫情影响队列的婴儿期免疫接种基本实现了补种，但4岁时的接种覆盖率仍比疫情前水平低6个百分点。4岁时的疫苗接种率最初在欧洲族裔儿童和非受益父母的子女中下降幅度最大，但补种速度很快超过了毛利族、太平洋岛民和受益儿童，在我们观察期结束时，后者的接种覆盖率仍比疫情前水平低相当大的差距。因此，疫情加剧了免疫接种覆盖率方面原有的不平等。
