ACIP recommends Tdap for health care workers.(News)

ATLANTA -- Health care workers in hospitals or ambulatory care settings and those who have direct patient contact should receive the adolescent/adult formulation of the tetanus-diphtheria-acellular pertussis vaccine, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention voted at its winter meeting.

The new recommendation is aimed at protecting health care workers as well as their patients. "Preventing pertussis among health care workers will decrease exposures and secondary cases in both pediatric and adult care settings," said Dr. Trudy Murphy of the CDC's National Immunization Program.

Like the tetanus-diphtheria (Td) vaccine that it replaces, the tetanus toxoid, reduced diphtheria toxoid, and acellular pertussis vaccine, adsorbed (Tdap) is routinely recommended at intervals of 10 years for all adults.

But an interval as short as 2 years is now advised for the Tdap dose among health care workers in ambulatory and acute care settings, including physicians, nurses, aides, respiratory therapists, medical and other students, social workers, and clerical workers, among others.

Priority should be given to vaccination of health care workers who have direct contact with infants who are less than 12 months of age and have not yet received all three doses of the infant formulation diphtheria-tetanus-acellular pertussis vaccine (DTaP). Hospitals and ambulatory facilities are strongly encouraged to provide Tdap for health care workers and to use approaches that maximize vaccination rates, according to the draft document that the committee unanimously approved. The document must be adopted by the director of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before it becomes official.

The move follows ACIP's October 2005 vote to replace the old 10-year Td booster with Tdap (marketed by Sanofi Pasteur as Adacel) as a routine adult immunization (Ob.Gyn. News, Dec. 1, 2005, p. 28) and the committee's June 2005 ...