COVID-19 Pandemic: A Speed Breaker for Routine Immunisation

Abstract

Introduction: Immunisation services are affected by Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic due to lockdown and fear of COVID among public along with problems of workforce management and vaccine supply. All these factors have led to decrease in vaccination coverage. It may further lead to increase in risk of vaccine preventable diseases. Aim: To assess the overall trend and evaluate the vaccination coverage during COVID-19 pandemic in a tertiary care hospital in Gwalior district. Materials and Methods: Record based secondary data from the immunisation OPD of the tertiary care hospital Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh, India, for the period of 01 February 2020 to 31 August 2020 was utilised in current study. Data were entered into Microsoft Excel version-2007 and analysed. Frequency, percentage, mean, and standard deviation were calculated as a descriptive measures and graphical presentation to show time trends. The p-value was calculated at 5% level of significance. Results: In the study, 817 children were included, with mean age of 7.46 ±13.59 months. Total 61.1% (499) children were male and 38.9% (318) were female. During the study period, all the children were vaccinated for Bacille Calmette-Guerin (BCG) (10.6%) Pentavalent-1 series (36.4%), Pentavalent-2 series (17.4%), Pentavalent-3 series (12.2%), Measles-Rubella (MR-1) (6.5%), Booster-I (11.8%) and Booster-II (5.1%). Delayed vaccination was seen in 51(6.20%) children. The delay was observed for Pentavalent-2 series (43.1%), pentavalent-3 series (51.0%) and MR-1 (5.9%) and the difference is significant at p-value <0.05. Conclusion: Immunisation services were severely interrupted and completely suspended in April 2020. Certain amount of delay in various doses was also observed. Maintaining routine immunisation is essential in preventing an outbreak of vaccine preventable diseases.

Keywords

• childhood vaccination
• corona virus
• lockdown
• pentavalent
• vaccine delay
• vaccine timeliness