[Can citizenship help analyze the risk of underimmunization in the foreign population?]

Abstract

There is emerging evidence of distrustful attitudes towards vaccination of some sub-populations of migrants in Europe, that are at higher risk for under-immunisation. The Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted health disparities also at a national level: lower levels of Covid-19 vaccine uptake in immigrants' population compared with Italian citizens and a substantial heterogeneity in the first-dose vaccine coverage within immigrants' population have been documented. According to immigrants' citizenship, high coverages were observed in subjects from Southeast Asia and from South-Central America while Eastern Europeans showed the lowest coverages. These data suggest that taking into account immigrants' citizenship can help define appropriate strategies in order to promote a personalized approach to health problems and to strengthen vaccination uptake.