Public confidence in vaccine safety has fallen in countries across all regions, with some of the steepest drops exceeding 20 percentage points.
The article opens with an arrow chart tracking the share of people who agree vaccines are safe in 2015 versus 2024, grouped by region. Grouping by region makes clear the erosion isn’t confined to any one part of the world, but rather is a global trend.
A long-run line chart of DTP3 coverage—the third dose of the diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis vaccine, which serves as an indicator of routine immunization system performance—shows the progress at risk: a decades-long convergence toward higher immunization coverage across both higher- and lower-income countries, with DTP3 coverage exceeding 80% on average across most regions.
A scatter plot pairing DTP3 coverage with confidence in vaccine safety shows how the relationship between reported confidence and actual vaccination varies widely across countries, drawing attention to the interplay of forces shaping vaccination outcomes, including public confidence, access, and governance.
Some countries combine strong coverage with relatively high public confidence, while others maintain high coverage despite lower levels of trust. Bulgaria, Hungary, and Latvia, for example, rely on mandates to sustain vaccination rates above 90 percent, as they rank among the countries with the highest levels of vaccine skepticism globally. Many other European countries achieve high coverage without mandates but through strong public health systems.
A world choropleth of measles incidence provides the clearest early signal that coverage is slipping, with Canada losing its measles-free status in 2025; Austria, Spain, and the United Kingdom in 2026; and the United States now fighting to keep its own as cases surge.
