Monitoring the COVID-19 immunisation programme through a national immunisation Management system - England's...

Area of Science:

• Public Health
• Health Informatics
• Immunisation Systems

Background:

• Existing English vaccination records are fragmented across general practices and non-interoperable sub-national registers.
• The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the need for a centralized system to manage vaccinations delivered in diverse settings.
• A national vaccine register was developed to address these limitations and collect COVID-19 vaccination data.

Purpose of the Study:

• To describe the development and implementation of a national vaccine register for COVID-19 vaccinations.
• To assess the accuracy and reliability of the data collected by the new system.
• To enable efficient monitoring of vaccine coverage, effectiveness, and safety.

Main Methods:

• Development of the National Immunisation Management System (NIMS) by multiple health and digital government agencies.
• Centralized data entry of COVID-19 vaccinations, verified against individual National Health Service numbers.
• Validation of NIMS data by comparing it against self-reported vaccination details from an enhanced surveillance system.

Main Results:

• NIMS successfully recorded COVID-19 vaccinations administered in various settings.
• High concordance was observed between NIMS records and self-reported data for vaccination status (97.8% unvaccinated agreement).
• Excellent agreement was found for at least one dose (100%), two doses (99.3%), vaccination dates (98.3%), and manufacturers (98.8% first dose, 99.3% second dose).

Conclusions:

• The National Immunisation Management System (NIMS) effectively captures COVID-19 vaccination data from multiple delivery sites.
• NIMS provides accurate and reliable individual-level vaccine data, crucial for public health.
• Daily access to NIMS data allows for rapid estimation of vaccine coverage and effectiveness by UKHSA.