What Is Carriage?
A carrier is a person who harbors a specific infectious agent in the absence of clinical illness with or without a detectable immune response (4). The carrier state may reflect carriage of the organism in the incubation period before clinical symptoms appear, during an illness, or after recovery from illness. The carrier state may be short or long, and it may be intermittent or continuous. Carriers may spread infection to others. Latency should be distinguished from the carrier state, in that a latent organism is not transmissible. Hib carriage can be synonymous with Hib colonization and is defined as the presence of viable Hib organisms in the human pharyngeal mucosa. This definition depends on the sensitivity and specificity of the process used to identify viable bacteria in a healthy host. The Detection of Carriage Because Hib carrier status is usually determined by culture techniques, the efficiency of every step in the microbiologic investigation must be maximized. Potential probl
