Pandemic led to fewer adolescents vaccinated against HPV, CDC says

Pandemic led to cancellation, postponement of 30 percent of health-care visits

The study looked at challenges to HPV vaccination at family practice and pediatric clinics that serve adolescents. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that most teenagers begin their series before they turn 15.

Researchers knew the vaccination numbers had fallen dramatically during the pandemic — a 2021 study in the journal Vaccine found that vaccination coverage dropped by about 75 percent in April 2020 compared with previous years and warned that if teens didn’t get brought up to date, hundreds of thousands of new cases would result. And even before the pandemic, only 54 percent of adolescents in the United States were up to date on their HPV vaccines.

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Those living in rural areas were less likely to be vaccinated. So researchers interviewed clinicians in Iowa, most in rural areas, about how the pandemic affected HPV vaccination.

In the interviews, the clinicians said there had been fewer opportunities to vaccinate adolescents because of changes to their practice precipitated by the pandemic. Clinic regulars started getting care via telehealth, and the number of patients with covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, and those in need of testing cut down on the amount of time the clinicians had for routine vaccinations. Younger patients were often prioritized for care, and patients proved reluctant to go into the clinic because they feared getting the coronavirus.

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Logistics were another hurdle. It became hard to coordinate and implement vaccine clinics, and providers got less education. As priorities shifted, the focus turned away from HPV vaccination because of short staffing and reassignments related to covid-19.

The study reveals a priority shift that could endanger adolescents and young adults who miss out on the vaccine, the researchers write. “Pre-existing low rates of HPV vaccination coupled with the impact of the pandemic threaten to leave adolescents unprotected against HPV and with increased susceptibility to HPV-related cancers,” they say.