IF YOU had a smallpox vaccination as a child and think you’re still protected, think again. Almost everyone vaccinated before smallpox was eradicated in the mid-1970s has now lost their immunity.
The bad news comes from a study of 621 microbiologists in Maryland who received fresh vaccinations between 1994 and 2001 to protect them in their work. Only about 40, or just 6 per cent, were still immune from their earlier vaccinations.
“The study is, to the best of my knowledge, the only one since eradication which tries to look at the durability of immunity,” says lead author Michael Sauri, director of the Occupational Medicine Clinic…
