Other deadly diseases spreading globally amid COVID-19 disruption
WASHINGTON — While the world is understandably focused on countering the coronavirus pandemic, a secondary global public health crisis has been brewing: a drop-off in vaccination rates against a range of other dangerous infectious diseases.
A year ago, when much of the world’s population began to socially distance to reduce the spread of COVID-19, an unfortunate consequence of that countermeasure was a steep decline in the number of children receiving their routine vaccinations for diseases such as measles, rubella and polio.
Comprehensive figures are not yet available for how many children around the world have missed their shots in the past year because of COVID-19, but experts say it is a serious worry.
“I am very concerned that a lot of children are not getting the vaccinations they would normally have received, and I think that’s another issue underneath the pandemic that we’re going to have to address,” Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee with oversight of international development, told CQ Roll Call.
Last May, the World Health Organization, UNICEF and Gavi, a multilateral public-private initiative that provides vaccines to the world’s poorest countries, warned that roughly 80 million children were at risk of missing their routine vaccinations as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. And in July, those U.N. agencies said that for the first time in nearly three decades, the world could see a decrease in the number of people who are vaccinated against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis because of a “substantial drop” in children receiving their necessary three shots of the DTP3 vaccine.
During the first half of 2020, some 101 mass vaccination campaigns were canceled across 56 countries, according to an op-ed last month in the journal Nature Medicine.
Particularly worrisome have been breakdowns in the vaccination schedules for children receiving their shots against measles, which is the most infectious virus in the world. Even before the COVID-19 outbreak, alarm bells were ringing about the growing spread of measles, as 2019 saw the highest rates of new measles infections in more than two decades.
“One deadly, highly infectious virus — measles — is unforgiving of immunity gaps and is certain to resurge after the COVID-19 pandemic, with a resultant catastrophic impact on young lives,” reads the Nature op-ed, written by a group of six public health experts from Australia, Bangladesh, Kenya, Germany, Syria and the United States.
The experts warn that higher rates of malnutrition among the world’s poor children, another consequence of the coronavirus pandemic’s impact on global food supplies, may lead to an uptick in measles-related deaths.
“The impact of COVID19 on both routine immunization and campaigns canceled in the countries at highest risk will provide the perfect conditions for a post-pandemic measles catastrophe, unless appropriate action is taken now,” the group said. “Countries must prioritize ‘catch-up’ vaccination so that children who have missed out are not left vulnerable.”