A unique measles B3 cluster in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands linked to air travel and transit at a large international airport, February to April 2014.

Thursday, 21st of April 2016

Euro Surveill. 2016 Mar 31;21(13). doi: 10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2016.21.13.30177.

A unique measles B3 cluster in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands linked to air travel and transit at a large international airport February to April 2014.

Nic Lochlainn L¹ Mandal S de Sousa R Paranthaman K van Binnendijk R Ramsay M Hahné S Brown KE.

Author information

• ¹National Institute for Public Health and the Environment Centre for Infectious Disease Control Bilthoven the Netherlands.

Abstract

This report describes a joint measles outbreak investigation between public health officials in the United Kingdom (UK) and the Netherlands following detection of a measles cluster with a unique measles virus strain. From 1 February to 30 April 2014 33 measles cases with a unique measles virus strain of genotype B3 were detected in the UK and the Netherlands of which nine secondary cases were epidemiologically linked to an infectious measles case travelling from the Philippines. Through a combination of epidemiological investigation and sequence analysis we found that measles transmission occurred in flight airport and household settings. The secondary measles cases included airport workers passengers in transit at the same airport or travelling on the same flight as the infectious case and also household contacts. This investigation highlighted the particular importance of measles genotyping in identifying transmission networks and the need to improve vaccination public health follow-up and management of travellers and airport staff exposed to measles.