KEY INSIGHTS
From Q2 2009 to Q4 2022, the total child immunisation rate:
- Rose from 75% to 88% under National-led governments (peaking at 89.4% in Q3 2016).
- Dropped from 88% to 77% under Labour-led governments (bottoming out at 76.3% in Q2 2022)
Looking at the inverse figures of children not immunised:
- ~1 in 8 children were not immunised under National
- ~1 in 4 (twice as many) are not getting immunised under Labour
- 6, 18, and 54-month (4.5 year) milestone ages have the lowest immunisation rates with 69%, 68% and 65% respectively. All of these are significant drops from their peaks of 82%, 86%, and 73%.
- The highest childhood immunisation rate recorded for any milestone age was 95% in Q2 2016 for 12 Months Old.
KEY QUESTIONS
- Why?
- What impact, if any, has New Zealand’s Covid response had on these childhood vaccination rates?
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Have your say
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Full data analysis
Please contact us if you would like the complete research.
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Other notes:
- All available information has been published.
- Q = quarter.
- The Ministry of Health records page published Q2 and Q4 2009, but not Q3 2009. As such, we have put the average of the two numbers either side as a placeholder for now until they provide them. Excel cannot complete line graphs when data is missing like this.
- The 2017 election was held on the 23rd September = the end of Q3. As such, we have put the Q3 score under National and the Q4 score onwards under Labour.
- The Ministry of Health’s recording method for quarterly data is “The report measures the number of children who turned the milestone age of X months between the specified 3 month periods and who have completed their age appropriate immunisations by the time they turned the milestone age.”
- To get the total childhood immunisation %, we added up the ‘Fully Immunised for Age’ scores for all milestone ages and divided this by the total ‘No. Eligible’ for all milestone ages.
- The quarterly data is better than the annual data because it ensures less double counting of children who will fall under two milestone ages. In fact, for the annual data, some children may fall within three milestone ages for that year, e.g. 6/8/12 months, 8/12/18 months, and also 54 months/5 years.
- For the quarterly data we used, it will double count some children who turned both 6 months and 8 months within that 3-month window (so ~1 in 3), but those two numbers average 77% = the average overall. We have also shown a secondary graph breaking out each milestone age so that everyone can see that all 7 milestone ages have decreased under the current Government.
- Not all milestone age immunisation data has been recorded since Q2 2009:
- 5 years old started in Q2 2010 at 67%, so dragged the overall immunisation average down
- 8 months old started in Q3 2012 at 87%, so dragged the overall average up
- 54 months old started in Q3 2020 at 73%, so dragged the overall average down
- We narrowed the range of the y-axis values:
- So that the trends were easier to see.
- Since immunisation levels have not dropped below 75% overall, or below 63% for any milestone age.
- This is also standard practice in the New Zealand Medical Journal. See https://journal.nzma.org.nz/journal-articles/new-zealands-immunisation-policy-fails-again-and-entrenches-ethnic-disparities.
- You might also be interested in this fact on destroyed measles vaccinations https://thefacts.nz/social/320000-80-8m-value-of-mmr-vaccines-expired-and-destroyed/.
- All numbers are provisional and subject to revision.
Thank you to the Factors who helped pull this together.
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SOURCE:
- Quarterly immunisation data = https://www.health.govt.nz/our-work/preventative-health-wellness/immunisation/immunisation-coverage/national-and-regional-immunisation-data
Data published by The Ministry of Health of New Zealand
(c) Crown Copyright
Licensed for use under the creative commons attribution licence (BY) 4.0
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