JournalInternational Journal of Infectious Disease (1201-9712), 102, 203 ~ 211
Enrollment typeSCIE
publication date 20210101
Objective: Even with relatively high vaccination coverage, Japan experienced rubella epidemics in 2012？2014 and 2018？2019, which were fueled by untraced imported cases. We aimed to develop a risk map for rubella epidemics in Japan by geographic location via analysis of seroepidemiological data and accounting for the abundance of foreign visitors.
Methods: Geographic age distribution and seroprevalence were used to compute the age- and sex-dependent next-generation matrix in each region. We computed the probability of a major epidemic using the assumed number of untraced imported rubella cases proportionally modeled to the number of foreign travelers.
Results: Risks of a major epidemic were high in areas with capital cities, while areas with a greater fraction of older people yielded smaller effective reproduction numbers, a lower volume of foreign travelers, and thus a lower probability of a major epidemic.
