Can health care workers receive the live, attenuated intranasal H1N1 vaccine?
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s guidelines on the live, attenuated intranasal H1N1 vaccine and health care workers, including emergency medical services personnel, say it’s OK to give the live H1N1 vaccine to health care workers who are otherwise healthy and not pregnant through age 49 years. This vaccine can also be given to health care workers with infants under six months or other household contacts with immunodeficiency conditions. Health care workers who are vaccinated with the live H1N1 vaccine should not care for patients with severely weakened immune systems requiring protective isolation for seven days after vaccination. Health care workers that take care of people with lesser degrees of immunosuppression (people with diabetes, healthy newborns or newborns in intensive care units, those taking long-term steroids or people with HIV) can receive the live H1N1 vaccine.
