Early impact of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic and physical distancing measures on routine childhood vaccinations in England, January to April 2020
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Abstract
Using electronic health records, we assessed the early impact of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) on routine childhood vaccination in England by 26 April 2020. Measles-mumps-rubella vaccination counts fell from February 2020, and in the 3 weeks after introduction of physical distancing measures were 19.8% lower (95% confidence interval: −20.7 to −18.9) than the same period in 2019, before improving in mid-April. A gradual decline in hexavalent vaccination counts throughout 2020 was not accentuated by physical distancing.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2020.05.07.20094557: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:A limitation of this analysis is that changing counts of vaccinations delivered could be driven by numbers of eligible infants, rather than vaccine coverage. Decreasing birth rates may plausibly explain the gradually falling …
SciScore for 10.1101/2020.05.07.20094557: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:A limitation of this analysis is that changing counts of vaccinations delivered could be driven by numbers of eligible infants, rather than vaccine coverage. Decreasing birth rates may plausibly explain the gradually falling hexavalent vaccination counts, (7) and migration could play a role too, but these cannot explain the size and timing of the changes in MMR vaccination. Deferral of data entry could explain some decrease in real-time vaccination counts, but not the subsequent increase. It is vital that routine childhood vaccinations continue, particularly for diseases such as measles for which a high coverage is required to prevent outbreaks.(5, 8) Decreased vaccine counts have also been reported in other high-income countries,(9, 10) and the Regional Office for Europe of the World Health Organization has advised that routine immunization services should continue to aim for high population immunity.(11) Countries will require immunisation recovery plans with innovative approaches to delivery that maintain social distancing requirements. Vaccinations usually delivered in schools and affected by school closures will also require catch-up programmes. Continuous and timely assessment of vaccine coverage will be required to respond to potentially volatile changes during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.
Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.
Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.
Results from rtransparent:- Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- No protocol registration statement was detected.
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