Measles outbreak in Greater Manchester, England, October 2012 to September 2013: epidemiology and control

This paper describes the epidemiology and management of a prolonged outbreak of measles across the 2.7 million conurbation of Greater Manchester in the United Kingdom. Over a period of one year (from October 2012 to September 2013), over a thousand suspected measles cases (n = 1,073) were notified across Greater Manchester; of these, 395 (37%) were laboratory-confirmed, 91 (8%) were classed as probable, 312 (29%) were classed as possible and 275 (26%) excluded. Most confirmed and probable cases occurred in children within two age groups—infants (too young to be eligible for measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccination according to the national immunisation programme) and children aged 10-19 years (low vaccine uptake in this cohort because of unfounded alleged links between the MMR vaccine and autism). During this one year period, there were a series of local outbreaks and many of these occurred within the secondary school setting. A series of public health measures were taken to control this prolonged outbreak: setting up incident management teams to control local outbreaks, a concerted immunisation catch-up campaign (initially local then national) to reduce the pool of children partially or totally unprotected against measles, and the exclusion of close contacts from nurseries and school settings for a period of 10 days following the last exposure to a case of measles.