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Measles and rubella monitoring - January 2016

Attachments

Reporting on surveillance data from 1 January 2015 – 31 December 2015 and epidemic intelligence data until 31 January 2016

Main developments

Starting with this issue, ECDC will publish the measles and rubella monitoring report twice a year. The first issue of each year will report on the previous calendar year, while the summer issue will focus on the most recent measles and rubella season and present the data collected during the past 12 months.

Visualisations of measles and rubella data are available online through the measles and rubella pages of the ECDC Surveillance Atlas (updated monthly). In addition, ECDC produces monthly high-resolution maps, which are available from: http://ecdc.europa.eu/en/healthtopics/measles/epidemiological_data/Pages/measles_maps.aspx.

Measles

  • Between 1 January 2015 and 31 December 2015, 3 969 cases of measles were reported by a total of 30 EU/EEA countries. All thirty countries reported consistently throughout this 12-month period.

  • Germany accounted for 62.1% of all cases reported during this period.

  • Measles is targeted for elimination in Europe. The measles notification rate was below the elimination target (one case per million population) in 13 of the 30 reporting countries. Eight of these 13 countries reported zero cases. Sixteen reporting countries had a notification rate above this indicator, with Croatia reporting the highest rate (51.6 cases per million).

  • The diagnosis of measles was confirmed by positive laboratory results (serology, virus detection or isolation) in 65.3% of all cases.

  • Of all cases, 88.9% had a known vaccination status, and of these, 84.8% were reported as unvaccinated. In the target group for routine childhood MMR vaccination (1–4-year-old children), 77.0% of all cases were unvaccinated.

  • During the period 1 January 2015–31 December 2015, one measles-related death was reported in a 19-month-old child in Germany. Six cases were complicated by acute measles encephalitis.

  • No new measles outbreaks have been detected in EU/EEA Member States by epidemic intelligence since the previous report, dated 31 October 2015.

  • In the rest of the world, measles outbreaks have occurred in Pakistan, Malaysia, Nepal, Egypt, Cameroon, Nigeria, South Sudan and Guinea.