Childhood Vaccination Coverage Statistics - 2020-21

This publication reports childhood vaccination statistics for England in 2020-21, relating to the routine vaccinations offered to all children up to the age of 5 years, derived from the Cover of vaccination evaluated rapidly (COVER) programme.

The European Region of the World Health Organization (WHO) currently recommends that on a national basis at least 95% of children are immunised against diseases preventable by immunisation and targeted for elimination or control (specifically, diphtheria, neonatal tetanus, pertussis, polio, Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib), Hepatitis B, measles, mumps and congenital rubella¹).

The routine childhood immunisation programme for the UK includes these immunisations recommended by WHO as well as a number of others as advised by the Joint Committee on Vaccination & Immunisation (JCVI) and defined by Public Health England (PHE)²

There is an expectation that the UK coverage estimates for all routine childhood immunisations evaluated up to 5 years of age achieve 95%.

Seasonal influenza vaccine coverage is also presented in this report, for children aged 2 and 3 years. The 95% target does not apply to influenza vaccinations.

_{1. Source: http://www.euro.who.int/__data/assets/pdf_file/0010/98398/wa540ga199heeng.pdf}

_{2. Source: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/immunisation-against-infectious-disease-the-green-book}

Report bulletin

• Presents a detailed summary of the 2020-21 data collection.
• Further information on the data presented is available in the additional resources outlined here.

Interactive dashboard

• The main report is accompanied by an interactive data dashboard. Data are presented in maps and charts. This allows comparison between areas as well as showing changes over time.
• The geographic breakdowns included in the dashboard are upper tier local authority, region and country.
• http://bit.ly/child_vacc_stats_annual

Data tables

• Contain all relevant statistics for 2020-21.
• Available in Excel or csv format.

Appendices

• Further detail on a number of topics including
  • Publication context
  • Coverage definitions
  • Changes to the programme
  • Data collection
  • Specific vaccines
  • Future collections
  • Related publications

Quality statement:

• Methods for data collection

All resources are available from the publication page.

PCV schedule changes

Changes to infant PCV schedule for babies born on or after 1 January 2020

From 1 January 2020, the infant vaccination schedule for pneumococcal vaccine (PCV) changed. All babies born on or after 1 January 2020 will receive their 1st dose of PCV with their other infant vaccinations at 12 weeks of age and a booster dose of this vaccine on or after their 1st birthday.

Children in the 12 month cohort in 2020-21 were born between 1 April 2019 and 31 March 2020. This means that most of these children will have received 2 doses of PCV but the youngest quarter will have only had 1 dose. It is therefore not possible to provide an accurate estimate of coverage for completed courses of PCV vaccine at 12 months this year. PCV data for the 12 month cohort is not included in this report.

This change will not affect calculation of coverage of the PCV booster evaluated at 24 months of age.

COVID -19
Disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, beginning in March 2020, is likely to have caused some of the decreases in vaccine coverage seen in 2020/21 compared to 2019/20. This is most likely to be seen in the 12 month cohort, where some children would have been scheduled to receive their routine childhood immunisations from March 2020 onwards. 

For the majority of children in the 24 month cohort and all of the children in the 5 year old cohort, their vaccines would have been scheduled to be given before the COVID-19 pandemic started. However, some children who may have missed out on receiving routine immunisations at the scheduled time and otherwise would have caught up by their 2nd or 5th birthday, may also have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic from late March 2020 onwards.

See the full schedule on page 8 for details of vaccination timings.

_{*   Coverage is assessed when children reach specific ages. The ages presented in this report are marked with a tick √}   

_{** From autumn 2017, all babies born on or after 1 August 2017 are eligible for a hexavalent vaccine which includes hepatitis B (HepB) for their primary immunisations.
    In 2020-21, the 12 month and 24 month birth cohorts (children born between 1 April 2018 and 31 March 2020) would receive the 6-in-1 vaccination.}

_{*** Babies born from 1 January 2020 will be offered 1 dose of PCV at 12 weeks of age and a booster dose at 1 year(Link). Due to this change, PCV 12m data is not available for 2020-21.
Prior to this, the primary course consisted of a 1st dose at 8 weeks and a 2nd dose at 6 weeks.}