Helping Public Health Decision-Makers Refine Community Coronavirus Disease-2019 Vaccination Efforts--Association between Confirmed Coronavirus Disease-2019 Cases and Vaccinations

Abstract

IntroductionThe response to the coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) epidemic included biomedical and vaccine research as well as identi-fication of COVID-19 cases, contact tracing, community health promotion and disease prevention and community vaccination. The COVID-19 vaccinations remind public health professionals and non-professionals alike of this essential public health in-tervention for controlling infectious diseases. Actions that seek to improve existing vaccination efforts are equally important for effective public health programming.MethodsSecondary data analysis uses an ecological study design to examine any possible associations between the number of COVID-19 cases identified at medical facilities (facility names not identified) within a healthcare system and the number of COVID-19 vac-cinations administered within the system and reflect upon the findings for public health action. A loess curve was plotted to help to identify if a curvature pattern was present in a scatter plot.ResultsThe statistical algorithm for the loess curve identified a curvature pattern. All plots showed that values became more separated in moving from left to right. DiscussionThis aggregate pattern in number of COVID-19 cases and number of vaccinations administered might be present in other public health settings or healthcare systems. Four refinements were proposed to help public health decision-makers to improve vaccina-tion efforts: explore the reasons for differences in COVID vaccination given the number of confirmed COVID cases between facilities; provide vaccination outside traditional settings; facilitate public health and primary care partnerships for community vaccination; and address vaccine knowledge-gaps in the community and other barriers to vaccination.