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. 2023 Jun 9:8:70.
doi: 10.12688/wellcomeopenres.18735.2. eCollection 2023.

First dose COVID-19 vaccine coverage amongst adolescents and children in England: an analysis of 3.21 million patients' primary care records in situ using OpenSAFELY

Lisa E Hopcroft  1 , Helen J Curtis  1 , Andrew D Brown  1 , William J Hulme  1 , Colm D Andrews  1 , Caroline E Morton  1 , Peter Inglesby  1 , Jessica Morley  1 , Amir Mehrkar  1 , Sebastian C Bacon  1 , Rosalind M Eggo  2 , Viyaasan Mahalingasivam  2 , Edward P K Parker  2 , Laurie A Tomlinson  2 , Christopher Bates  3 , Jonathan Cockburn  3 , John Parry  3 , Frank Hester  3 , Sam Harper  3 , Ben Goldacre  1 , Alex J Walker  1 , Brian MacKenna  1
Affiliations

First dose COVID-19 vaccine coverage amongst adolescents and children in England: an analysis of 3.21 million patients' primary care records in situ using OpenSAFELY

Lisa E Hopcroft et al. Wellcome Open Res. .

Abstract

Background: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccination programme in England was extended to include all adolescents and children by April 2022. The aim of this paper is to describe trends and variation in vaccine coverage in different clinical and demographic groups amongst adolescents and children in England by August 2022. Methods: With the approval of NHS England, a cohort study was conducted of 3.21 million children and adolescents' records in general practice in England, in situ and within the infrastructure of the electronic health record software vendor TPP using OpenSAFELY. Vaccine coverage across various demographic (sex, deprivation index and ethnicity) and clinical (risk status) populations is described. Results: Coverage is higher amongst adolescents than it is amongst children, with 53.5% adolescents and 10.8% children having received their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. Within those groups, coverage varies by ethnicity, deprivation index and risk status; there is no evidence of variation by sex. Conclusion: First dose COVID-19 vaccine coverage is shown to vary amongst various demographic and clinical groups of children and adolescents.

Keywords: Covid-19; Primary Health Care; Public Health; vaccine.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests: BG has received research funding from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, the NHS National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), the NIHR School of Primary Care Research, NHS England, the NIHR Oxford Biomedical Research Centre, the Mohn-Westlake Foundation, NIHR Applied Research Collaboration Oxford and Thames Valley, the Wellcome Trust, the Good Thinking Foundation, Health Data Research UK, the Health Foundation, the World Health Organisation, UKRI MRC, Asthma UK, the British Lung Foundation, and the Longitudinal Health and Wellbeing strand of the National Core Studies programme; he is a Non-Executive Director at NHS Digital; he also receives personal income from speaking and writing for lay audiences on the misuse of science. BMK is also employed by NHS England working on medicines policy and clinical lead for primary care medicines data.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.. The coverage of first dose COVID-19 vaccination amongst adolescents (12–15 years) and children (5–11 years) in England, broken down by demographic (sex, index of multiple deprivation and ethnicity) and clinical characteristics (risk status), as of 10 August 2022.
Coverage is calculated as a percentage of the whole cohort. The overall coverage for each cohort is indicated with a dashed grey line on each plot. Vaccine campaign length: 52 weeks for vulnerable adolescents (began 6 August 2021); 46 weeks for all other adolescents (began 21 September 2021). Vaccine campaign length: 27 weeks for vulnerable children (began 30 January 2022); 18 weeks for all other children (began 4 April 2022). The broad ethnicity categories encompass the detailed categories as follows: Black (African, Caribbean, Any other Black background), Mixed (White + Black Caribbean, White + Black African, White + Asian, Other Mixed), South Asian (Indian or British Indian, Pakistani or British Pakistani, Bangladeshi or British Bangladeshi, Other Asian), White (British or Mixed British, Irish, Other White), Other (Chinese or Other); and Unknown.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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