Philippine immunization coverage and dengvaxia: An infodemiological study

A dengue vaccine, dengvaxia, was licensed for the first time in 2015. It was approved for use in 11 countries where dengue infection is endemic, including the Philippines. In November 2017, controversy arose in the Philippines regarding the dengvaxia vaccine. We hypothesized that the dengvaxia controversy might be correlated with immunization coverage in the Philippines.

We performed an analytical and infodemiological study on web-based interest in dengvaxia, both globally and in 18 dengue endemic countries, from 2015 to 2020 using Google Trends™. Comparisons were made with search trends for the components of the National Immunization Program (NIP) and vaccine coverage by computing the Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient (r) between each variable.

Among the 18 countries included, the Philippines had the highest search volume index for dengvaxia, with peaks in searches coinciding with that of worldwide search trends. There was no correlation between the relative search volume for dengvaxia with that of vaccines included in the NIP in the Philippines from 2015 to 2020. There was no significant correlation between web-based interest in dengvaxia and the estimated immunization coverage from 2015 to 2019.

There was no significant correlation between web-based interest in dengvaxia, the vaccines in the NIP, and national immunization coverage.