Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) investigators report that about one in five US children had parents reporting vaccine hesitancy (VH) from 2019 to 2022, and VH increased after the authorization of the COVID-19 vaccine for children aged 5 to 11 years and declined for children aged 6 months to 4 years.
The findings are published in Vaccine, and come as the US Food and Drug Administration's VRBPAC (Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee) prepares to meet next week to pick COVID and influenza strains to include in updated vaccines.
The study was based on responses to the 2019 through 2022 National Immunization Surveys.
Overall, VH levels in the United States remained fairly consistent, at 19%, from quarter 2 in 2019 to quarter 3 in 2022. But at various points during the pandemic, certain demographic groups saw increases and decreases in VH.
Hesitancy up in parents living below poverty line
Parents of children ages 5 to 11 had an average quarterly increase in parental VH from the first quarter of 2021 to quarter 3 of 2022. Parents living below the poverty level also had increasing VH throughout the study period.
Official US approval of COVID-19 vaccines for children had varying effects on VH, depending on child age: For children ages 6 months to 4 years, VH dropped from 21.6% to 19.4%, a decrease of 2.2 percentage points (95% confidence interval, −3.9 to −0.6).
But VH increased among parents of children 5 to 11; after the authorization, 21.0% had a parent that reported VH, compared with 19.8% before.
Due to concerns about COVID-19 vaccine safety and increased misinformation about vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic, parental acceptance and confidence in routine childhood vaccines may have been altered.
"Parents of children aged 5–11 had a sharp increase in VH from Q1 2021 to Q3 2022. Similarly, those living below poverty also saw a gradual increase in VH throughout the study period. Due to concerns about COVID-19 vaccine safety and increased misinformation about vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic, parental acceptance and confidence in routine childhood vaccines may have been altered," the authors concluded.