Nine autonomous communities have already deployed vaccination against herpes zoster for the first time in their territories for immunosuppressed groups at special risk.

These are specifically

Galicia, Castilla y León, the Basque Country, Madrid, Valencia, Castilla-La Mancha, the Balearic Islands, Catalonia and Murcia,

which in recent weeks have already begun to administer the vaccine to transplant recipients or those on the transplant waiting list, people with HIV, cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy for solid tumors, people undergoing treatment with anti-JAK drugs, and patients with blood malignancies.

And it is expected that in the coming months the rest of the autonomies will be incorporated into this vaccination for risk groups.

The Community of Madrid, however, has decided to go a step further and, in addition to patients at risk, has also approved the start of systematic vaccination against

herpes zoster in people over 65 years of age

by 2022 .

Specifically, the 2022 vaccination calendar that Madrid has just made public establishes that, in addition to risk groups, "people 65 years of age will be systematically vaccinated (in 2022, cohort born in 1957) and and will vaccinate people 80 years of age (in 2022, cohort born in 1942). These age groups will be notified of the vaccination start date throughout the current year. Depending on the availability of doses, progressively vaccination will be expanded to other age cohorts."

It has been a year, in fact, that the Ministry and the autonomies agreed in the

Conference on Vaccines and in the Public Health Commission

(although they did not manage to discuss it in the plenary session of the Interterritorial Health Council) who should be vaccinated against herpes zoster, before the imminent arrival in Spain of the Shingrix vaccine, from GSK, a vaccine produced by adjuvanted subunit DNA recombination techniques, and which has been shown to be more effective than the one available to date, from MSD, and used only in pilot programs in Spain , a live attenuated vaccine.

The recommendations approved in the Conference on Vaccines and in the Public Health Commission in March 2021 established vaccination in the aforementioned groups of immunocompromised patients, but also stated that "systematic vaccination against herpes zoster should be incorporated with the vaccine with the HZ/su vaccine (the GSK vaccine) in the general population in the

65-year-old cohort in 2022

, after confirmation of dose availability Depending on dose availability, at least one cohort per year will be recruited and vaccinated starting by the cohort that

reaches 80 years

of age and descending in age until reaching the first cohort that was vaccinated at 65 years of age", in line with the decision that the Community of Madrid has now adopted.

"However, in the common vaccination calendar for 2022 published by the Ministry of Health in February, there is no mention of herpes zoster" for the elderly population, explains

Fernando Moraga-Llop

, vice president of the Spanish Society of Vaccinology, detailing that herpes vaccination has only been formally included in the vaccination schedule for risk groups of the adult population in 2022. In his opinion, the new vaccine "is very effective and is scientifically indicated for healthy people over 50 years of age and over 18 years of age with risk conditions, in which, in addition, the other vaccine that had been available until now, the MSD one, was contraindicated because it was an attenuated virus vaccine that could not be given to immunosuppressed people".

For this reason, in his opinion, "the scientific recommendation would be to vaccinate everyone

over 50

, even if they do not have these risk conditions if vaccines are available, because shingles is a disease that has a higher incidence after 50 years and that increases with age and that can generate many complications. Or, at least, to those over 65 as approved in the document" of the Public Health Commission and has now decided to do Madrid.

However, regional sources do not rule out that other communities join the

systematic vaccination of certain cohorts of people over 65 years of age

this year 2022. Moraga-Llop clarifies that, in addition, people previously vaccinated with the MSD vaccine (in Castilla y León Until now, for example, there was a pilot vaccination program with the attenuated vaccine for patients aged 60 and 69 years with COPD in treatment with inhaled corticosteroids or with type 1 and 2 diabetes mellitus) who could be vaccinated with the new vaccine after 5 years.

he vice president of the Spanish Society of Vaccinology also predicts that in the future "due to the recurrence of herpes zoster" it is conceivable that it will also be administered to

people who have suffered from it on some occasion

to prevent recurrence.

The Madrid document also points out in this line: "Given that herpes zoster can be recurrent, those people included in the recommended vaccination groups and with a history of this disease can be vaccinated. They will be vaccinated once the acute period of the disease has passed. People who have not had chickenpox or received the chickenpox vaccine are not at risk of shingles, so vaccination is not indicated."

However, Moraga-Llop recalls that "although it would be desirable, it is not a vaccine that is available in pharmacies and that can be bought at the moment, so it will be vaccinated according to what the calendar of each autonomy sets because in Spain there is a

common calendar , but not unique

."

The new herpes zoster vaccination is undertaken with the challenge or opportunity of parallel vaccination of the

fourth doses of covid in immunosuppressed groups

.

Conforms to The Trust Project criteria

Know more

  • Vaccines

  • Madrid's community

  • Castile and Leon

  • Valencia

  • Coronavirus

  • Castilla la Mancha

  • Murcia

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