Characterizing the impact of spatial clustering of susceptibility for measles elimination.

ABSTRACT: Measles elimination efforts are primarily focused on achieving and maintaining national vaccination coverage goals, based on estimates of the critical vaccination threshold (V_c): the proportion of the population that must be immune to prevent sustained epidemics. Traditionally, V_c estimates assume evenly mixing populations, an invalid assumption. If susceptible individuals preferentially contact one another, communities may remain vulnerable to epidemics even when vaccination coverage targets are met at the national level. Here we present a simple method to estimate V_c and the effective reproductive number, R, while accounting for spatial clustering of susceptibility. For measles, assuming R₀ = 15 and 95% population immunity, adjustment for high

SUBMITTER: Truelove SA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6348711 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature