Introduction: Background and porpose: With starting of the sars-cov-2 (Covid-19) disease in the world, the issue of routine vaccination of people, became to a very important challenge, especially children. According to the World Health Organization reports, the Covid-19 epidemic has challenged the provision of routine vaccination and the number of children who receive routine vaccines worldwide has decreased. The present study was designed and implemented to determining the impact of the covid-19 pandemic on the vaccination coverage of children under 6 years old (12 and 18 months old) in Qom province in two time periods before and after the covid-19 pandemic.
Methods: Materials and Methods: The present study is of quantitative type and cross-sectional descriptive analytical in applied type. Vaccination coverage data in 2020 and 2021 (before starting and during of the epidemic) was extracted based on the information of children's documents in the Sib database. The rate of non-vaccination and delay in vaccination in the two periods were compared. Data analysis was conducted in SPSS software by paired t-tests, Wilcoxon, independent t, Mann-Whitney, one-way analysis of variance, Kruskal-Wallis and Spearman's correlation tests. The significance level of the tests was considered less than 0.05.
Results: Results: The mean of delay in the first (MMR1) and second (MMR2) doses of measles vaccine was estimated 14.48±26.95 and 20.67±28.74 days, respectively, and the mean delay time of MMR1 and MMR2 vaccine was obtained equal to 6 and 11 days, respectively. Measles vaccination coverage decreased from 87.6% before the Covid-19 pandemic to 74.7% during the pandemic. In addition, the prevalence of non-vaccination rate increased form 12.4% for MMR1 before of starting pandemic to 25.3% for MMR2 during the pandemic which indicates a 12.9% increase in non-vaccination of MMR.
Conclusion: Conclusion: The Covid-19 pandemic has caused a disruption in the routine vaccination of children. After the Covid-19 pandemic the prevalence of vaccination coverage reduced and the delay time in receiving the vaccine in vaccinated children increased. Although higher education of mothers, non-employment of mothers and Iranian nationality have shown a positive relationship with higher and on-time immunization, but the fear of disease transmission in health environments and vaccination centers, as well as some cultural factors, have caused vaccine phobia in the society. Therefore, appropriate interventions to promote and expand routine immunization coverage and provide safe services in special conditions is essential.