Abstract
Pneumococcal carriage is a prerequisite for invasive and non-invasive infections, where children and elderly are the most vulnerable groups. Aims: Determine rates of carriage, resistance, and coverage of the pneumococcal conjugate vaccines (PCVs) in children attending day care centers (DCC) in north Jordan. Methods: Nasopharyngeal swabs (NP) were taken from healthy Jordanian children from north Jordan with ages ranging from 1 month to 14 years in the period from 2008 to 2019. Classical methods were used for cultivation, identification, resistance testing, and serotyping. Results: 1866 NP swabs were tested with carriage rate 39.3% (733 isolates). Resistance was variable; however, it showed highest rates for penicillin (89.3%) and trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole (73.0%). Serotype 19F predominates with 17.6% of all serotypes. Coverage of the future PCV20 was 73.1% compared to the old PCV7 (41.7%). About 493 cases had a previous 1–3 PCV7 injections, among which 256 (51.9%) cases were pneumococcal carriers, distributed as non-PCV vaccine serotypes (31.6%), and with PCV types (68.4%). Conclusions: The potential inclusion of the PCV vaccination in the national immunization program of the country is necessary.