Did this pandemic trigger a spike in mothers′ hesitancy over their children’s routine immunizations? -A cross sectional study

BACK GROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic has created a lot of disruptions for delivery of health care services like routine immunization. Delayed immunization can lead to outbreak of many vaccine preventable diseases. The current pandemic created confusions and fear among mothers to vaccinate their children. This study was an initiative to understand the struggles faced by them during the pandemic. OBJECTIVE: To estimate the prevalence of hesitancy for routine immunization among urban mothers during COVID-19 pandemic and to determine the factors responsible for their hesitancy. METHODOLOGY: It was a community based cross-sectional study which was done for three months, data were collected from 246 mothers (sample size calculated by assuming 20% as prevalence based on pilot study) having children whose age was less than 6 years by administering a pre-tested semi structured questionnaire. RESULT: It was found that 38% of mothers were having vaccine hesitancy during the pandemic mainly due to the factors like fear of exposure to COVID-19 and due to lockdown.Out of 6 variables 5 variables(except religion) was found to be statistically significant.On the multivariate analysis only prior to pandemic hesitancy retained statistical significance. CONCLUSION: From our study we infer that the pandemic has increased hesitancy among mothers, hampering routine immunization. Thus, this domain deserves more consideration by health care officials and policy makers, to prevent disruption of the immunization programme.