Monitoring the COVID-19 immunisation programme through a national immunisation Management system – England’s experience

BACKGROUND: In England routine vaccinations are recorded in either the patients General Practice record or in series of sub-national vaccine registers that are not interoperable. During the COVID-19 pandemic it was established that COVID vaccines would need to be delivered in multiple settings where current vaccine registers do not exist. We describe how a national vaccine register was created to collect data on COVID-19 vaccines. METHODS: The National Immunisation Management System (NIMS) was developed by a range of health and digital government agencies. Vaccinations delivered are entered on an application which is verified by individual National Health Service number in a centralised system. UKHSA receive a feed of this data to use for monitoring vaccine coverage, effectiveness, and safety. To validate the vaccination data, we compared vaccine records to self-reported vaccination dose, manufacturer, and vaccination date from the enhanced surveillance system from 11 February 2021 to 24 August 2021. RESULTS: With the Implementation of NIMS, we have been able to successfully record COVID-19 vaccinations delivered in multiple settings. Of 1,129 individuals, 97.8% were recorded in NIMS as unvaccinated compared to those who self-reported as unvaccinated. One hundred percent and 99.3% of individuals recorded in NIMS as having at least one dose and two doses of the COVID-19 vaccine were also self-reported as having at least one and two doses, respectively. Of the 100% reporting at least one dose, 98.3% self-reported the same vaccination date as NIMS. A total of 98.8% and 99.3% had the same manufacturer information for their first dose and second dose as that which was self-reported, respectively. DISCUSSION: Daily access to individual-level vaccine data from NIMS has allowed UKHSA to estimate vaccine coverage and provide some of the world’s first vaccine effectiveness estimates rapidly and accurately.