Estimating the measles effective reproduction number in Australia from routine notification data

Verification of measles elimination in Australia: Application of World Health Organization regional guidelines

“…If R is maintained constantly below one (the epidemic threshold), endemic transmission will be eliminated [21]. The estimates provided here are updates on previously published reports using national notification and serosurveillance data [10,22,23]. The estimated values of R for Australia are below one in each of the three serosurveys (Table 5), providing additional evidence that elimination is being maintained.…”

Measles – The epidemiology of elimination

“…These methods can be utilised over time to monitor trends and can also be applied to birth cohorts and at subnational level, with adequate confidence levels, to explore for heterogeneity of risk [35]. Sero-surveys may also provide useful data to provide estimates of R e and signal the risk of impending outbreaks [37].…”

“…R e depends on the level of susceptibility in the population, in contrast to the basic reproduction number (R 0 ), which is the average number of secondary cases arising from one infectious case in a totally susceptible population [33]. Well established methods exist to estimate R e from outbreak data and these have been applied in the United States, Canada and Australia [34][35][36]. During the elimination scenario, where the proportion of susceptibles is sufficiently low that sustained transmission is not possible, the vast majority of outbreaks are small in size (single digit number of secondary cases) and there are on average few generations of spread, with R e sustained well below the epidemic threshold of 1.…”

Measles associated with international travel in the region of the Americas, Australia and Europe, 2001–2013: A systematic review

“…Furthermore, the comparability of estimates of imported measles between countries is hampered based on different case definitions ( Table 1). As the Australian case definition may be more sensitive and less specific than the United States' criteria, this fact may result in different case numbers when compared to the USA [35].…”

“…All import-related cases are to be considered as indigenous cases [30]. -Australia's definition of an imported case involves assessment on a case-by-case basis using epidemiological and virological evidence: a case public health authorities believe was acquired overseas based on international travel in the period before rash onset [35]. b The percentage of imported cases is based on those with known importation status.…”