Background/Objectives: Routine immunisation (RI) coverage declines during the COVID-19 pandemic, from 2020 to 2022, are well-reported. With the declared end to the Public Health Emergency of International Concern in May 2023, and the end of most non-pharmaceutical interventions that were introduced to prevent or minimise COVID-19 spread, we (I) assess whether routine immunisation coverage has rebounded to pre-pandemic trends, and (II) seek to identify factors that help predict whether country performance has exceeded, maintained, or declined compared to expectations (based on time-series forecasting).
Methods: We quantify global and country-level routine immunisation diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis (DTP) coverage trends post-pandemic (2023) compared to pre-pandemic trends using time-series forecasting across 190 countries. We used Discriminant Analysis of Principal Components and Random Forests to identify relevant predictors of country-level coverage performance, including 28 indicators of health system strength, health workforce, country income, pandemic containment, economic, and health policies, and demographic aspects.
Results: We show that mean global DTP third-dose coverage levels remained on average 2.7% [95% confidence intervals: 1.1% - 4.3%] lower than expected in 2023. However, once accounting for temporal demographic changes, we find that this translates to the total number of immunised children almost reverting to expected levels, owing to decreasing fertility reducing global-level immunisation target populations. At a country-level, notable disruption remaining in over 30 countries (17.6% of countries below expectations, 81.6 within expected ranges, and 1.7% above expectations). Neither predictive method performed well at identifying factors associated with coverage disruptions.
Conclusions: Despite the end of COVID-19 pandemic measures, RI remains below expectations in 20% of countries. No clear drivers of this continued disruption were identified. Further research is required to inform recovery efforts and prevent future epidemic and pandemic disruptions to routine health services.