Impact of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic on vaccine-preventable disease campaigns.

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has contributed to the widespread disruption of immunization services, including the postponement of mass vaccination campaigns.

Methods: In May 2020, the World Health Organization and partners started monitoring COVID-19-related disruptions to mass vaccination campaigns against cholera, measles, meningitis A, polio, tetanus-diphtheria, typhoid, and yellow fever through the Immunization Repository Campaign Delay Tracker. The authors reviewed the number and target population of reported preventive and outbreak response vaccination campaigns scheduled, postponed, canceled, and reinstated at 4 time points: May 2020, December 2020, May 2021, and December 2021.

Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Global Poliovirus Surveillance.

On January 30, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (1). On March 24, 2020, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) suspended all polio supplementary immunization activities and recommended the continuation of polio surveillance (2). In April 2020, GPEI shared revised polio surveillance guidelines in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, which focused on reducing the risk for transmission of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, to health care workers and communities by modifying activities that required person-to-person contact, improving hand hygiene and personal protective equipment use practices, and overcoming challenges related to movement restrictions, while continuing essential polio surveillance functions (3).

Routine immunization coverage in Pakistan: a survey of children under 1 year of age in community-based vaccination areas.

Pakistan is one of two countries in which poliovirus remains endemic. Considering the high number of children born every year, reaching and vaccinating new birth cohorts by improving routine immunization coverage in children <1 year of age is crucial to halting virus transmission. In 2015, a community-based vaccination (CBV) strategy, using local community members to enhance vaccine acceptance and improve routine immunization service delivery, was introduced in areas of Pakistan that have never interrupted poliovirus transmission.