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Insights
The 6-10-14 weeks pertussis vaccination schedule offers the greatest disease control, significantly reducing infant incidence. A Belgian campaign improved compliance, lowering severe pertussis cases.
Area of Science:
- Epidemiology
- Public Health
- Mathematical Modeling
Background:
- Pertussis (whooping cough) is a dangerous, vaccine-preventable respiratory illness primarily affecting infants.
- Current primary pertussis vaccination schedules vary globally, with common options including 2-4-6 months, 6-10-14 weeks, 2-3-4 months, and 3-4-5 months.
- Optimizing pertussis vaccine schedules is crucial for effective disease control and infant protection.
Purpose of the Study:
- To analyze and compare the effectiveness of different primary pertussis vaccination schedules in controlling disease transmission.
- To evaluate the impact of vaccine coverage and effectiveness on disease incidence across various schedules.
- To assess the influence of public health interventions on vaccination compliance and pertussis incidence.
Main Methods:
- Utilized an age-structured deterministic mathematical model to simulate pertussis transmission dynamics.
- Calculated disease incidence rates for four common vaccination schedules under varying coverage and effectiveness levels.
- Incorporated real-world immunization data from Argentina and Belgium for model validation.
Main Results:
- The 6-10-14 weeks schedule demonstrated the highest reduction in pertussis incidence (approximately 36% for 0-1-year-olds compared to the 2-4-6 months schedule).
- Accelerating the first dose of the 2-4-6 months schedule to 6 weeks significantly decreased severe pertussis cases.
- A communication campaign in Belgium to enhance vaccination compliance led to an estimated 16% reduction in severe pertussis and 7% in total infant incidence.
Conclusions:
- Mathematical modeling provides valuable insights into optimizing existing vaccination schedules and improving compliance strategies.
- The 6-10-14 weeks schedule emerged as the most effective option for pertussis control.
- The Belgian vaccination campaign successfully reduced severe pertussis incidence, underscoring the importance of public health initiatives.
Background:
Pertussis is a vaccine-preventable respiratory disease that may cause death mainly in infants. The schedules for primary pertussis vaccination are set in each country by the local health authorities. Several different schedules meet World Health Organization recommendations, 2-4-6 months, 6-10-14 weeks, 2-3-4 months and 3-4-5 months being the most commonly used worldwide. In this work, we analyze the benefits of changing the vaccination schedule to control the disease.
Methods:
We used an age-structured deterministic mathematical model for pertussis transmission to compute the incidences for the 4 above-mentioned schedules. Different vaccination coverages and vaccine effectiveness levels were considered. Immunization data from Argentina and Belgium were used.
Results:
The highest reduction in incidence was obtained by adopting the 6-10-14 weeks schedule, reaching about a 36% reduction of 0-1-year incidence with respect to the 2-4-6 months schedule. We show the dependence of this reduction on both vaccine effectiveness and coverage. The severe pertussis incidence decreased significantly when the first dose of the 2-4-6 months schedule was accelerated to 6 weeks. Finally, we estimated that the communication campaign adopted in Flanders (Belgium) to improve compliance with the vaccine schedule could lead to a reduction of 16% in severe pertussis incidence and about 7% in total incidence in infants.
Conclusions:
Our work highlights the use of mathematical modeling to quantify the benefits of the existing vaccination schedules and the strategies that could be implemented to improve their compliance. Our results indicated that the 6-10-14 weeks is the best schedule option and that the Belgium vaccination campaign significantly reduced the incidence of severe cases.
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