UN warns of falling vaccination levels due to COVID-19

PARIS: The World Health Organization and UNICEF warned on Wednesday that there was a decrease in the number of children worldwide receiving life-saving vaccines due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The first four months of 2020 saw a "substantial drop" in completion of the three-dose jab that protects against diphtheria, tetanus, and whooping cough, the first decline in 28 years.


"Vaccines are one of the most powerful tools in the history of public health, and more children are now immunized than ever before," said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

But he said the pandemic had put those gains at risk.

"The avoidable suffering and death caused by children who miss routine vaccinations could be much greater than COVID-19," it said in a statement.

During the pandemic crisis, at least 30 measles vaccination campaigns have been canceled or are at risk, the two UN agencies said in a joint statement.

As of this May, the pandemic had disrupted immunization programs in three-quarters of more than 80 nations that responded to a UN survey conducted with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.

Reluctance to leave home, transportation problems, financial difficulties, movement restrictions or fear of exposure to the virus were some of the reasons explained for the slowdown in vaccines.

Stagnant progress

"COVID-19 has made prior routine vaccination a daunting challenge," said UNICEF Executive Director Henriette Fore.

"We must prevent further deterioration in vaccine coverage ... before children's lives are threatened by other diseases.

"We cannot change one health crisis for another."

Progress in immunization coverage was already stagnating before the new coronavirus arrived, UN agencies said.

Malaria and diphtheria, tetanus, and whooping cough, known as DTP3, had reached approximately 85% of the target age group worldwide.

"The probability that a child born today will be fully vaccinated with all the recommended vaccines globally by the time he turns five is less than 20 percent," they said in the statement.

In 2019, some 14 million children missed the life-saving vaccines.

Two-thirds of them are in 10 countries: Angola, Brazil, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, and the Philippines.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, historically high vaccination rates have decreased, the UN reported.

In Brazil, Bolivia, Haiti, and Venezuela, immunization coverage has decreased by at least 14% in the last decade.