What can you expect if you do a study of unvaccinated vs vaccinated kids during a pertussis outbreak?
Yeah - more pertussis if you are unvaccinated.
An Unvaccinated vs. Vaccinated DTaP Study Gets Expected Results
In a recent study, Effectiveness of Diphtheria and Tetanus Toxoids and Acellular Pertussis Vaccine in Children Aged 6 Months–6 Years During a Statewide Pertussis Outbreak — Alaska, May–November 2024, researchers found that unvaccinated kids got a lot more pertussis.
Is anyone surprised?
And if you are wondering why so many ‘fully vaccinated’ kids got pertussis, it is simply because they were looking at kids who had finished their primary series of DTaP shots.
So, fully vaccinated meant having received three DTaP vaccines.
Of course, to be truly fully vaccinated against pertussis, you also should receive both of your booster doses too.
Still, this study indicates that the primary series provides fairly good protection.
And it is certainly better than being unvaccinated and getting pertussis.
What’s missing?
“…symptom severity among case-patients and control patients was not available for comparison and therefore was not assessed.”
Effectiveness of Diphtheria and Tetanus Toxoids and Acellular Pertussis Vaccine in Children Aged 6 Months–6 Years During a Statewide Pertussis Outbreak — Alaska, May–November 2024
The study didn’t provide any details on how sick these kids got.
All we know is that many more unvaccinated kids got pertussis and that the DTaP vaccine was very effective in helping kids avoid getting sick.
But that’s something you probably already knew, right?