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BMC Infectious Diseases
Published in: BMC Infectious Diseases 1/2022

Open Access 01-12-2022 | Vaccination | Research

COVID’s collateral damage: likelihood of measles resurgence in the United States

Authors: Mugdha Thakur, Richard Zhou, Mukundan Mohan, Achla Marathe, Jiangzhuo Chen, Stefan Hoops, Dustin Machi, Bryan Lewis, Anil Vullikanti

Published in: BMC Infectious Diseases | Issue 1/2022

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Abstract

Background

Lockdowns imposed throughout the US to control the COVID-19 pandemic led to a decline in all routine immunizations rates, including the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine. It is feared that post-lockdown, these reduced MMR rates will lead to a resurgence of measles.

Methods

To measure the potential impact of reduced MMR vaccination rates on measles outbreak, this research examines several counterfactual scenarios in pre-COVID-19 and post-COVID-19 era. An agent-based modeling framework is used to simulate the spread of measles on a synthetic yet realistic social network of Virginia. The change in vulnerability of various communities to measles due to reduced MMR rate is analyzed.

Results

Results show that a decrease in vaccination rate \((\mathrm{\alpha })\) has a highly non-linear effect on the number of measles cases and this effect grows exponentially beyond a threshold \((\mathrm{\alpha })\). At low vaccination rates, faster isolation of cases and higher compliance to home-isolation are not enough to control the outbreak. The overall impact on urban and rural counties is proportional to their population size but the younger children, African Americans and American Indians are disproportionately infected and hence are more vulnerable to the reduction in the vaccination rate.

Conclusions

At low vaccination rates, broader interventions are needed to control the outbreak. Identifying the cause of the decline in vaccination rates (e.g., low income) can help design targeted interventions which can dampen the disproportional impact on more vulnerable populations and reduce disparities in health. Per capita burden of the potential measles resurgence is equivalent in the rural and the urban communities and hence proportionally equitable public health resources should be allocated to rural regions.
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Footnotes
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Metadata
Title
COVID’s collateral damage: likelihood of measles resurgence in the United States
Authors
Mugdha Thakur
Richard Zhou
Mukundan Mohan
Achla Marathe
Jiangzhuo Chen
Stefan Hoops
Dustin Machi
Bryan Lewis
Anil Vullikanti
Publication date
01-12-2022
Publisher
BioMed Central
Keyword
Vaccination
Published in
BMC Infectious Diseases / Issue 1/2022
Electronic ISSN: 1471-2334
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1186/s12879-022-07703-w

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