An Overview of Strategies to Improve Vaccination Compliance before and during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

“An overview of vaccination policy strategies before and during COVID-19 pandemic” by Charrier et al, described the outcome of vaccination mandate. This study overviewed the vaccine policies and its resulting vaccination coverage in children before and during COVID-19 pandemic. This manuscript is well written. Measles vaccine was picked as a parameter for comparison.

Vaccine policy can be just one of the reasons why people are willing to be vaccinated. Vaccine hesitancy deriving from different cultural background is a worldwide issue. With the growing power of social media and internet, people may have relied on internet information to make decisions.

The authors picked coverage rate of measles vaccination in high-income countries as a parameter for comparison. I wonder whether this is appropriate as measles vaccine has been used in humans for decades with sufficient data of safety and efficacy. By contrast, COVID-19 vaccines have become available for only about 2 years and there are many options of vaccines as well. People who refused to get COVID-19 vaccines can have  more concerns on safety issues.

In addition, different mandates might have been "invented" in COVID-19 pandemic era. For example, a study conducted by Karaivanov et al. has shown that government-mandated proof-of-vaccination requirements or certificates have sizable and statistically significant impacts on COVID-19 vaccine uptake. And yet similar mandate was not used before, not to mention for measles vaccine. Therefore, it could be more meaningful to analyze the reasons behind vaccine hesitancy and look into more effective mandates were to increase COVID-19 vaccination rate.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The article "Relationship between parental exposure to electromagnetic fields and tumors in the central nervous system in children: a systematic review" presented by Lorena Charrier and her colleagues is exciting. Not only because of its significant problem, but also because of the pleasant narrative style.

 

Congratulate your colleagues; I wanted to see this work as excellent. So I have a few comments and proposals that I would like to make for nice thinking.

 

One of the problems of public health and, frankly, all social sciences is the vague understanding of basic words, especially when it is necessary to discuss in international forums or in international journals. Because words often have a historical background in specific countries; for example, comparing planning means programming and vice versa. That is why I avoid or better say that I do not really like such combinations in phrases as "political strategies".

 

Moving on to a more critical issue, I would like to cite the purpose of this study. It is "to ensure a review of strategies/strategies, not policies, as in the title, sic!/ to promote adherence to childhood vaccination in high-income countries."

 

I have read the text very carefully and I have some doubts as to whether the title is relevant to the text. Simply saying that the title and text diverge from each other or other words do not fit together.

 

The title refers to policies, but the text provides an overview of the principles and coverage of vaccination in different countries. I think the objectives of this study are:

 

1. review of the rules and extent of vaccination,

 

2. check the relationship between them, e.g. examine the impact of the level of coercion and vaccination coverage, and

 

3. discuss the factors of indecision to vaccination / among others / regarding measles and COVID-19

 

It would be worth somehow rethinking the title.

 

The World Bank divides countries into four categories based on their GNI per capita. To my knowledge, for 2022, the borders for the group of high-income countries are $12,646 or more. I understand that you are using this division when writing about high-income countries. But many more countries belong to the high-income group you are studying. It is worth explaining why you chose these countries to skip the others.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The manuscript with manuscript ID: ijerph-1851108 entitled "An overview of vaccination policy strategies before and during 2 the COVID-19 pandemic" seems good research. The manuscript is well written and has sufficient data and may be published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health after revision. I have many points for the authors to consider:

·         However, this paper is self-explanatory and can be acceptable with revision after typographical and grammatical corrections.

·         The manuscript is on the whole written good but there are some problems with the English (including tenses, plurals, matching of adjectives and nouns, adverbs and verbs) such that other sections are almost ‘good’ and I would be inclined to rectify the partial contribution for plagiarism.

·         I feel that authors should add, if possible, the impact of COVID-19 on vaccination strategy of EU.

·         A comparative vaccination data is also required from other parts of the world including Asia, Africa too. This effort will improve the quality of the paper.

·         I also feel that authors should describe vaccination strategy in the holistic perspective.

·         If the authors make the suggested changes, then accept this article because being as important contribution on vaccination policy strategies before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. If they do not, then the article will be yet another of those ‘tantalising’ article that promises much but deliver little and therefore do not get cited enough.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx