Caveats in reporting of national vaccine uptake

During the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, policymakers and public health agencies urgently required contemporaneous data on vaccine uptake across whole populations and within their subsections. This was challenging because several doses of vaccine needed to be administered to different age groups at different times following their specific approval, and the number of doses may have also varied by specific subpopulations. There was a need for dynamic reporting among policymakers, health agencies, the media, and the general public. In this paper, we reflect on Scotland’s experience and report several caveats that must be considered when reporting vaccine uptake at a national level, especially when it is required for a specific age group, such as children or adolescents, or among older persons who are at particularly high risk.

In our recent paper on the BNT162b2 COVID-19 vaccination uptake, safety, effectiveness, and waning in children and young people aged 12–17 years in Scotland, we were asked by the reviewers to clarify our approach to measuring the uptake at different time points [1]. This is because the figures can be derived in almost real-time either from the national health registries or from electronic health records. Due to various circumstances which will be explained and discussed in this paper, those estimates may differ at the same point in time, which has to be considered when the rates of uptake are later used in rigorous research.