So far this year the National Institute for Communicable Diseases has issued reports on three different outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases. Vaccine coverage was low even before the COVID-19 pandemic, and immunisation rates declined further during lockdown.
, a mumps outbreak was confirmed as the NICD had identified 580 positive cases so far this year.
Professor Susan Goldstein, deputy director and COO of PRICELESS — The South African Medical Research Council’s Centre for Health Economics and Decision Science, tells Spotlight that even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic vaccination rates were not what they should be, but that the pandemic has made matters worse in more ways than one.
Anthonet Koen, Wits university senior researcher at the Vaccines and Infectious Diseases Analytics’ unitOut of the three outbreaks, measles and diphtheria are more concerning than mumps because of the severity of illness. “Part of the reason that the measles outbreak is potentially tailing off could be the additional vaccines that were offered to children during the recent catch-up campaign, in addition to all the other measures that have been put in place,” he says.
Whether we have returned to those pre-COVID-19 levels is unclear, however, last year Dr Haroon Saloojee, Professor in the Division of Community Paediatrics at Wits and a member of the ministerial National Advisory Group on Immunisation that we may have returned to the same level of vaccine coverage as before the pandemic based on data he has seen at NAGI.
They agreed that at this point there isn’t necessarily going to be a dramatic resurgence of other vaccine-preventable diseases, but that low vaccination coverage does pose a risk for potential outbreaks of other diseases and coverage should be improved urgently. “It’s a bit of a luck of the draw kind of thing, but the potential is definitely there because of the poor [immunisation] rates and it has been there for a number of years. I think we’ve been maybe lucky until now but with these added problems of loadshedding and poor water supply and poverty, we may not be so lucky,” she says.
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