Research Article Inducing Herd Immunity against Seasonal Influenza in Long-Term Care Facilities through Employee Vaccination Coverage: A Transmission Dynamics Model

Copyright © 2015 Aaron M. Wendelboe et al. 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. Introduction. Vaccinating healthcare workers (HCWs) in long-term care facilities (LTCFs) may effectively induce herd immunity and protect residents against influenza-related morbidity and mortality. We used influenza surveillance data from all LTCFs in NewMexico to validate a transmission dynamics model developed to investigate herd immunity induction.Material and Methods. We adjusted a previously published transmission dynamics model and used surveillance data from an active system among 76 LTCFs in New Mexico during 2006-2007 for model validation. We used a deterministic compartmental model with a stochasti