Changes in vaccine administration trends across the life-course during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States: a claims database study

ABSTRACT

Background

This study provides an updated and expanded analysis of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on routine vaccinations across the life-course in the United States.

Research design and methods

Routine wellness visits and vaccination rates were calculated using structured claims data for each month during the impact period (January 2020 to August 2022) and compared to the respective baseline period (January 2018 to December 2019). Monthly rates were aggregated as annual accumulated and cumulative percent changes.

Results

The complete monthly rate interactive dataset can be viewed at https://vaccinationtrends.com. The greatest decrease in annual accumulated administration rates in the 0–2 and 4–6 years age groups was for the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine; for adolescents and older adults, it was for human papillomavirus and pneumococcal vaccines, respectively. Routine in-person wellness visit rates recovered faster and more completely than vaccination rates in all age groups, indicating potential missed opportunities to administer vaccines during visits.

Conclusions

This updated analysis reveals that the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on routine vaccination continued through 2021 and into 2022. Proactive efforts to reverse this decline are needed to increase individual- and population-level vaccination coverage and avoid the associated preventable morbidity, mortality, and health care costs.

KEYWORDS:

• Vaccination
• immunization
• COVID-19
• adults
• pediatrics
• adolescents
• policy

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/14760584.2023.2217257

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Cath Ennis, PhD, in collaboration with ScribCo for medical writing assistance. Jo Wu and Angela Chen from Tigermed for their assistance with data programming. Odysseus Data Services, Inc. as technology partner in dashboard development.

Declaration of interest

AL Eiden, A DiFranzo, A Bhatti, H Echo Wang, G Bencina, K Saxena, YT Chen, SA Kujawski are current employees of Merck Sharp & Dohme LLC, a subsidiary of Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway, NJ, U.S.A, who may own stock and/or stock options in the Company. L Yao was an employee of Merck Sharp & Dohme LLC, a subsidiary of Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway, NJ, U.S.A during the time of the study. who may own stock and/or stock options in the Company. The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or material discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.

Reviewer disclosure

Peer reviewers on this manuscript have received an honorarium for their review work. Peer reviewers on this manuscript have no other relevant financial or other relationships to disclose.

Author contributions

All authors have substantially contributed to the conception and design of the article, interpreting the relevant literature and were involved in writing the review article or revised it for intellectual content.

Data availability statement

We have made all monthly percent change data available via an interactive website that allows users to generate visualizations of data of interest. The data can be accessed at https://vaccinationtrends.com.

Additional information

Funding

The manuscript was funded by Merck Sharp & Dohme LLC, a subsidiary of Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway, NJ, USA.