Managing the risks of vaccine hesitancy and refusals

Sunday, 7th of February 2016 Print

Managing the risks of vaccine hesitancy and refusals

 Noni E MacDonald

Published Online: 04 February 2016

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099(16)00028-1

In The Lancet Infectious Diseases John Glasser and colleagues1 report the results of a spatially-stratified model to better understand the dynamics of disease outbreaks and the link with vaccine hesitancy and refusal. Using data for 39 132 children starting elementary school in San Diego County CA USA in 2008 (2% of whom had a personal-belief exception to vaccines) the authors show the effect of heterogeneity on the reproduction numbers for measles mumps and rubella. Although the mean population immunities for measles mumps and rubella were similar to the population-immunity thresholds modelling for non-random mixing (unvaccinated children tend to preferentially mix with other unvaccinated children) and heterogeneity caused the basic reproductive numbers to increase by 70% meaning that an introduced infectious person could cause an outbreak.

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