CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Whooping cough or pertussis is an immune-preventable respiratory disease that has emerged in recent decades. The increased morbidity and mortality occurs in infants but cases were also detected in adolescents and adults. The epidemiological situation of the disease has forced to revise and implement new strategies to improve control. Many of these strategies, however, do not yet have experimental support that allows its universalization. In this context,mathematical models of disease transmission are useful tools in decision-making. Here we evaluated through a mathematical model for pertussis, the impact of different control actions on the incidence in the most vulnerable population (0-1 years). The deterministic model used hereis structured in ages and was previously developed by us. In particular, we discuss: the impact of including a booster at age 11, the effect of improving primary vaccination coverage and the consequences of reducing the delay in the implementation of different doses. We also estimated the effect of vaccination for pregnant women. Our results show that the inclusion of vaccination reinforcement at 11 years reduces the incidence in children less than 1 year by 3%, while the application of the primary dose schedule on time (without delay) decreases itby 16% With increasing coverage from 80% to 95%, the impact on the vulnerable population is significantly reduced (38%). If the percentage of pregnant women immunized reached 50%, the reduction of severe cases in infants would exceed 33%.

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