Preprint Article Version 1 Preserved in Portico This version is not peer-reviewed

Evaluation of Smallpox Vaccination Coverage and Attitude towards Monkeypox Vaccination among Healthcare Workers in An Italian University Hospital

Sergio Scarinci
,
Martina Padovan
ORCID logo ,
Bianca Cosci
,
Armando Petillo
,
Vittorio Gattini
,
Francesca Cosentino
,
Aldo Mignani
,
Rudy Foddis
ORCID logo ,
Giovanni Guglielmi
*
Version 1 : Received: 1 September 2023 / Approved: 4 September 2023 / Online: 5 September 2023 (03:15:19 CEST)

A peer-reviewed article of this Preprint also exists.

Scarinci, S.; Padovan, M.; Cosci, B.; Petillo, A.; Gattini, V.; Cosentino, F.; Mignani, A.; Foddis, R.; Guglielmi, G. Evaluation of Smallpox Vaccination Coverage and Attitude towards Monkeypox Vaccination among Healthcare Workers in an Italian University Hospital. Vaccines 2023, 11, 1741. Scarinci, S.; Padovan, M.; Cosci, B.; Petillo, A.; Gattini, V.; Cosentino, F.; Mignani, A.; Foddis, R.; Guglielmi, G. Evaluation of Smallpox Vaccination Coverage and Attitude towards Monkeypox Vaccination among Healthcare Workers in an Italian University Hospital. Vaccines 2023, 11, 1741.

Abstract

(1) Background: Mpox was declared an international public health emergency by WHO. Initially, Smallpox vaccine in Italy was offered only to laboratory personnel at direct risk of infection. Currently, Healthcare workers (HCWs) are all considered by European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) to be at low or moderate risk. (2) Methods: To assess smallpox vaccination coverage among HCWs in an Italian hospital with different levels of risk of exposure to Mpox infection and to assess their attitudes toward vaccination, a self-report was administered to HCWs stratified at high and low/moderate risk. (3) Results: Of the 338 HCWs evaluated, 60.36% provided the requested data; among them the percentage of previously vaccinated staff was 38.7%, which corresponds to 23.4% of the total HCWs in the departments considered. Considering those born before 1979 as vaccinated, vaccination coverage increases from 23.4% to 41.4%. The department with the highest percentage of vaccinated is infectious diseases (60.5%); The percentage of HCWs who adhered to vaccination is 23%; only 8.8% of laboratory staff want to vaccinate, compared with 100% of midwives. The department with the highest percentage of vaccination adherence is proctology (85.7%). (4) Conclusions: Given the vaccination adherence rate and the vaccination coverage of the departments analyzed, it would be useful to extend vaccination against Smallpox to frontline HCWs involved in patient care in Italy too.

Keywords

Vaccine coverage; monkeypox; Mpox; Smallpox; healthcare workers; occupational health; occupational exposure; vaccination attitude.

Subject

Public Health and Healthcare, Public, Environmental and Occupational Health

Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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