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ACIP revises immunity requirements for HCW MMR vaccination
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The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices has updated a decade-old policy about immunity requirements regarding measles-mumps and rubella vaccination for health care workers.
Kathleen Gallagher, DSc, from the Division of Viral Diseases at CDC, said her working group recommended changing four areas of the immunity requirements for healthcare personnel, originally published in 1997 in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
The first change regarded the addition of laboratory confirmation of disease as adequate proof of immunity against MMR. She said this recommendation was consistent with routine surveillance practices that accept this data as proof of immunity.
The second change concerns deleting an earlier recommendation that accepted physician-diagnosed disease as adequate evidence of disease.
Gallagher said that there is much anecdotal evidence that showed these criteria is not being adhered to in practice, mainly due to struggles locating childhood providers and medical records. In a recent study, only 2% of 800 cases of clinically-diagnosed cases of mumps were laboratory confirmed, and an alternative etiology was found in 14% of cases.
The ACIP amended Gallagher’s group’s recommendation concerning dealing with unvaccinated personnel born before 1957, stipulating that those health care workers who did not have laboratory evidence of disease should consider being vaccinating “with two doses of MMR vaccine at appropriate intervals.”
Finally, the committee recommended vaccination of those individuals born before 1957 with two doses of MMR during an outbreak situation. - by Colleen Zacharyczuk
For more information:
- Gallagher K. Proposed changes to current evidence of immunity requirements for MMR vaccination for healthcare personnel. Presented at: ACIP. June 24, 2009. Atlanta.