A joint statement released Wednesday by the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states that over 22 million infants around the world missed their first measles vaccine dose in 2020.
Measles is one of the most contagious viruses known, killing over 60,000 people each year, the majority of whom are young children. However, as recently as 2000, it killed over a million people per year.
Vaccination initiatives changed that, but it just takes a small setback to jeopardize any progress."Over 22 million infants missed their first dose of measles vaccine -- 3 million more than in 2019 and the largest annual increase in over 20 years," the CDC said.
It reported that measles infections declined in 2020, following a global increase from 2017 to 2019. That, according to the agency, is not necessarily good news.
"Large and disruptive measles outbreaks in 2020, however, suggest that measles transmission was underreported," the CDC team wrote in the agency's weekly report on death and disease, the MMWR.
Because of the pandemic, millions of children missed out on vaccines, according to the CDC.
The top 10 nations with the most infants who have not received the measles vaccine include Afghanistan, Angola, Brazil, Congo, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Pakistan, and the Philippines.
Last year, at least 24 immunization programs were postponed in 23 nations, potentially affecting 93 million people.
In the last 20 years, coverage with the first measles vaccine reached an all-time high of 86% in 2019, before falling to 84% last year due to the pandemic. Between 2000 and 2019, the immunization rate for the second measles shot nearly doubled before falling by one percentage point last year.
Simultaneously, the number of specimens sent to the WHO Global Measles and Rubella Laboratory Network fell to its lowest point in more than a decade, as 35 nations failed to report rates for the first measles dose and 50 failed to report rates for the second measles dose.
Over the last two decades, progress has been made, with the projected number of measles deaths reducing by 94%. Measles vaccine has avoided around 31.7 million lives worldwide since 2000, according to health organizations.
Despite a goal of eliminating measles in five of the six WHO regions by 2020, no region has succeeded in doing so.
The findings are consistent with prior CDC studies, which indicated a significant decrease in routine child and adolescent vaccinations during the early months of the pandemic.
