US deaths, hospitalizations from chickenpox nearly gone due to vaccine
New government data shows that the chickenpox vaccine has virtually eliminated deaths and severe cases of the virus in U.S. children and teens.
In the analysis, recently released by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were
97% fewer chickenpox cases among people under 20, along with 94% fewer hospitalizations and 99% fewer deaths through 2019. An estimated 90% of American children are now vaccinated against chickenpox.
“The high vaccination coverage the country has achieved has led to a huge decline in cases, from 4 million per year” to around 150,000, Dr. Mona Marin, a medical epidemiologist at the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Disease, told NBC News.
Marin said those statistics represent “a tremendous achievement.”
Savings from vaccination total about $1 billion annually in medical costs and lost work for parents staying home with sick kids, according to the CDC.
Chickenpox-related deaths in children have been “practically eliminated,” Marin said, noting there were none between 2012 and 2016.
The vaccine, which has been available in the United States since 1995, is a huge success story, Dr. William
Schaffner, a professor of infectious disease at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee, told NBC News.
The CDC recommends two doses of vaccine for children, teens and adults who have not had the virus.
“We have to keep vaccinating to maintain those benefits,” Schaffner said. “Otherwise, the disease will come back since it still exists around the world.”
Before the vaccine’s creation, about 100 to 150 people died from the virus annually and 10,000 to 13,000 were hospitalized, Dr. Leonard Krilov, chair of pediatrics and chief of the division of pediatric infectious diseases at the NYU Long Island School of Medicine, told NBC News.
Krilov called the vaccine program “a great success story.”
Vaccination may provide additional benefits, such as significantly lowering the risk of developing shingles, which is triggered by the same virus. The virus can hide in the body for years, causing a painful rash when it reactivates.