Philippine immunization coverage and dengvaxia: An infodemiological study.

Area of Science:

• Public Health
• Epidemiology
• Infodemiology

Background:

• Dengvaxia, a dengue vaccine, was licensed in 2015 and approved in 11 endemic countries, including the Philippines.
• A controversy surrounding Dengvaxia emerged in the Philippines in November 2017.
• The study investigated a potential correlation between the Dengvaxia controversy and immunization coverage in the Philippines.

Purpose of the Study:

• To analyze global and country-specific web-based interest in Dengvaxia from 2015 to 2020.
• To compare Dengvaxia search trends with those of the National Immunization Program (NIP) vaccines in the Philippines.
• To determine the correlation between public web interest in Dengvaxia and national immunization coverage.

Main Methods:

• An analytical and infodemiological study using Google Trends™ data (2015-2020).
• Web search trends for Dengvaxia were analyzed globally and in 18 dengue-endemic countries.
• Pearson correlation coefficients were computed to compare search trends and vaccine coverage data.

Main Results:

• The Philippines exhibited the highest search volume index for Dengvaxia among the 18 countries studied.
• No correlation was found between Dengvaxia search trends and NIP vaccine search trends in the Philippines (2015-2020).
• No significant correlation was observed between web-based interest in Dengvaxia and estimated immunization coverage (2015-2019).

Conclusions:

• Public web-based interest in Dengvaxia showed no significant correlation with NIP vaccines.
• There was no significant association between Dengvaxia-related web searches and national immunization coverage in the Philippines.
• The Dengvaxia controversy did not appear to impact overall immunization trends or coverage based on web search data.