Vaccination coverage (VC) against pertussis can increase when management practices and policies at primary care centres (PCCs) are reinforced. From 2011 to 2015, we performed a case–control study to evaluate VC among pertussis patients treated at PCCs in Barcelona, Spain. We recorded pertussis in patients from 8- to 16-year-olds at 52 PCCs. Pertussis cases had laboratory diagnostic and controls were healthy outpatients visiting the same facility for reasons other than cough. DTaP/dTap VC was recorded as either proper vaccination status (five doses recorded) or improper vaccination status (<5 doses recorded). We used a logistic regression model to estimate OR and 95% CI. We included 229 cases and 576 controls. VC was higher in cases (mean 5.01, s.e.: 0.57) than in controls (4.89, s.e.: 0.73). Around 69% of the cases had received DTaP primary immunisation after 2–5 years and 31.4% of cases had the dTap booster immunisation after 7–10 years. The 87% of children 5–9 years were properly vaccinated. We found no protection from becoming ill among properly vaccinated children (OR 1.87; 95% CI 1.22–2.85). The highest VC was observed in patients with confirmed pertussis, which was likely due to a more exhaustive follow-up of the VC in these patients. Being properly vaccinated against pertussis will probably not increase VC.

For decades, vaccination with the 23-valent polysaccharide pneumococcal vaccine (PPV23) has been available for risk groups aged ⩾2 years to prevent invasive pneumococcal disease (IPD). Recently, a 13-valent pneumococcal conjugated vaccine (PCV13) has been licensed for use in all age groups. PCV13 may induce better protection than PPV23 because of different immunogenic properties. This called for a revision of vaccine recommendations for risk groups. We therefore reviewed literature on risk groups for IPD, and effectiveness and safety of pneumococcal vaccines and supplemented that with information from public health institutes, expert consultations and data on IPD epidemiology. We included 187 articles. We discuss the implications of the heterogenic vulnerability for IPD within and between risk groups, large indirect effects of childhood immunization, and limited knowledge on additional clinical benefits of PCV13 in combination with PPV23 for the Norwegian recommendations. These are now step-wise and consider the need for vaccination, choice of pneumococcal vaccines, and re-vaccination interval by risk group.

Viral hepatitis is recognized as one of the most frequently reported diseases, and especially in China, acute and chronic liver disease due to viral hepatitis has been a major public health problem. The present study aimed to analyse and predict surveillance data of infections of hepatitis A, B, C and E in Wuhan, China, by the method of time-series analysis (MemCalc, Suwa-Trast, Japan). On the basis of spectral analysis, fundamental modes explaining the underlying variation of the data for the years 2004–2008 were assigned. The model was calculated using the fundamental modes and the underlying variation of the data reproduced well. An extension of the model to the year 2009 could predict the data quantitatively. Our study suggests that the present method will allow us to model the temporal pattern of epidemics of viral hepatitis much more effectively than using the artificial neural network, which has been used previously.