Concerns raised over booster MMR jab uptakes in North East kids in
North East health bosses have raised concerns over a dip in the uptake of MMR booster jabs in children.
Earlier this week, medical chiefs outlined worries to councillors from across the North East on the falling uptake of booster MMR shots for preschool children.
The MMR vaccine works in two parts, one given to children at around one and the other follow-up booster administered to kids from around three years and four months old. While the initial vaccine offers good protection, the second offers effectively complete protection, according to a presentation from Fergus Neilson, the screening and immunisation lead, NHS England North East and North Cumbria.
Vaccine coverage for the first jab across North Tyneside, Northumberland, Gateshead, Sunderland, and South Tyneside Councils largely hold up well, with an above 95% uptake. Newcastle City Council is an exception, hovering below 92%, according to figures from the North East and North Cumbria Integrated Care Board.
To illustrate the point about lower uptakes of the booster, councillors were shown that in Newcastle in the fourth quarter of 2023-24, the take-up rate sate between 85-90%. Mr Ferguson said uptake rates vared between local authority areas, however, and that the “pattern of lower rates for preschool boosters is seen in every local authority area”.
Mr Neilson said: “The second MMR, the so-called school booster, the uptake is not as high as we would like it to be”.
The rate of confirmed cases in the North East of measles sits at 2.91 per 100,000, below the national average of 3.52 per 100,000. The vast majority of those cases have been attributed to an outbreak in Middlesbrough, with only “sporadic” cases in other parts of the region with no evidence of “sustained transmission”, or spread from one person to another.
There have been 78 confirmed cases of measles reported in the North East to date.
Work to help increase MMR coverage in the North East and North Cumbria includes altering caregivers serving high-risk groups, including migrants, and prisoners to specialist guidance and provision. In addition, there is now a reminder “flag system” on every GP parent record for unvaccinated people, so doctors are altered to at-risk patients.
Health bodies in the North East and North Cumbria also launched a campaign in the summer of 2023 to target practices with probable low uptake of the MMR vaccine.