Spotlight on measles 2010: Measles outbreak among travellers returning from a mass gathering, Germany, September to October 2010

Pfaff, G.; Lohr, Dorothee; Santibanez, Sabine; Mankertz, Annette; Treeck, Ulrich van; Schönberger, Katharina; Hautmann, W

doi:10.2807/ese.15.50.19750-en

Cited by 40 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…16,17 A measles outbreak occurred at a church gathering in the USA in 2005 among unvaccinated participants, 18 and another was recorded during the 2010 Taizé festival in France, affecting several dozen mainly unvaccinated subjects, including secondary and tertiary cases mainly in Germany. 19 An outbreak of mumps with 214 identified patients occurred after an Easter festival in Austria in 2006. 20 Gastrointestinal infection associated with Salmonella enterica was reported from a Church festival in the USA in 2010, which was linked to the consumption of pulled pork.…”

Section: Religious Meetingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Communicable diseases as health risks at mass gatherings other than Hajj: what is the evidence?

Gautret

Steffen

2016

International Journal of Infectious Diseases

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Mass gatherings are characterized by the concentration of people temporally and spatially, and may lead to the emergence of infectious diseases due to enhanced transmission between attendees. This is well-demonstrated in the context of the Hajj and Umrah pilgrimages in Saudi Arabia. The goal of this review was to present the available evidence on outbreaks associated with a variety of pathogens, or also the lack thereof, as assessed by thorough surveillance at any mass gatherings with the exception of those in Saudi Arabia. A systematic search for relevant articles in the literature was conducted according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines. Sixty-eight studies were identified. Although outbreaks have not been reported frequently in or after mass gatherings outside the Hajj and Umrah pilgrimages, they have sometimes occurred at Muslim, Christian, and Hindu religious events, at sports events, and at large-scale open air festivals. In this review it was found that the most common outbreaks at these mass gatherings involved vaccine preventable diseases, mainly measles and influenza, but also mumps and hepatitis A. Meningococcal disease has rarely been recorded. Additionally it was found that the transmission of various communicable diseases that may not be prevented by vaccination has been recorded in association with mass gatherings. These were mainly gastrointestinal infections, caused by a variety of pathogens. It was also noted that some outbreaks occurring at mass gatherings have resulted in the international spread of communicable diseases.

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Section: Religious Meetingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Communicable diseases as health risks at mass gatherings other than Hajj: what is the evidence?

Gautret

Steffen

2016

International Journal of Infectious Diseases

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“…As such, there is a large body of work pointing to the ban of MGE as an effective NPI [4]. Furthermore, there are several examples of outbreaks of communicable diseases at MGEs occurring in the pre-COVID era, many of which contributed to the global dissemination of the pathogens responsible [5][6][7][8][9][10][11]. The WHO defines MGEs as highly visible events attended by tens of thousands of people, such as pilgrimages and sporting events, and coordinates with member states on matters of pathogen control at such gatherings [12].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modelling disease mitigation at mass gatherings: A case study of COVID-19 at the 2022 FIFA World Cup

Grunnill,

Arino,

McCarthy

et al. 2024

PLoS Comput Biol

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The 2022 FIFA World Cup was the first major multi-continental sporting Mass Gathering Event (MGE) of the post COVID-19 era to allow foreign spectators. Such large-scale MGEs can potentially lead to outbreaks of infectious disease and contribute to the global dissemination of such pathogens. Here we adapt previous work and create a generalisable model framework for assessing the use of disease control strategies at such events, in terms of reducing infections and hospitalisations. This framework utilises a combination of meta-populations based on clusters of people and their vaccination status, Ordinary Differential Equation integration between fixed time events, and Latin Hypercube sampling. We use the FIFA 2022 World Cup as a case study for this framework (modelling each match as independent 7 day MGEs). Pre-travel screenings of visitors were found to have little effect in reducing COVID-19 infections and hospitalisations. With pre-match screenings of spectators and match staff being more effective. Rapid Antigen (RA) screenings 0.5 days before match day performed similarly to RT-PCR screenings 1.5 days before match day. Combinations of pre-travel and pre-match testing led to improvements. However, a policy of ensuring that all visitors had a COVID-19 vaccination (second or booster dose) within a few months before departure proved to be much more efficacious. The State of Qatar abandoned all COVID-19 related travel testing and vaccination requirements over the period of the World Cup. Our work suggests that the State of Qatar may have been correct in abandoning the pre-travel testing of visitors. However, there was a spike in COVID-19 cases and hospitalisations within Qatar over the World Cup. Given our findings and the spike in cases, we suggest a policy requiring visitors to have had a recent COVID-19 vaccination should have been in place to reduce cases and hospitalisations.

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“…As such, there is a large body of work pointing to the ban of MGE as an effective NPI (4). Furthermore, there are several examples of outbreaks of communicable diseases at MGEs occurring in the pre-COVID era, many of which contributed to the global dissemination of the pathogens responsible (5; 6; 7; 8; 9; 10; 11). The WHO defines MGEs as highly visible events attended by tens of thousands of people, such as pilgrimages and sporting events, and coordinates with member states on matters of pathogen control at such gatherings (12).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modelling Disease Mitigation at Mass Gatherings: A Case Study of COVID-19 at the 2022 FIFA World Cup

Grunnill

Arino

McCarthy

et al. 2023

Preprint

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The 2022 FIFA World Cup was the first major multi-continental sporting Mass Gathering Event (MGE) of the post COVID-19 era to allow foreign spectators. Such large-scale MGEs can potentially lead to outbreaks of infectious disease and contribute to the global dissemination of such pathogens. Here we adapt previous work and create a generalisable model framework for assessing the use of disease control strategies at such events, in terms of reducing infections and hospitalisations. This framework utilises a combination of meta-populations based on clusters of people and their vaccination status, Ordinary Differential Equation integration between fixed time events, and Latin Hypercube sampling. We use the FIFA 2022 World Cup as a case study for this framework. Pre-travel screenings of visitors were found to have little effect in reducing COVID-19 infections and hospitalisations. With pre-match screenings of spectators and match staff being more effective. Rapid Antigen (RA) screenings 0.5 days before match day outperformed RT-PCR screenings 1.5 days before match day. A combination of pre-travel RT-PCR and pre-match RA testing proved to be the most successful screening-based regime. However, a policy of ensuring that all visitors had a COVID-19 vaccination (second or booster dose) within a few months before departure proved to be much more efficacious. The State of Qatar abandoned all COVID-19 related travel testing and vaccination requirements over the period of the World Cup. Our work suggests that the State of Qatar may have been correct in abandoning the pre-travel testing of visitors. However, there was a spike in COVID-19 cases and hospitalisations within Qatar over the World Cup. The research outlined here suggests a policy requiring visitors to have had a recent COVID-19 vaccination may have prevented the increase in COVID-19 cases and hospitalisations during the world cup.

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Spotlight on measles 2010: Measles outbreak among travellers returning from a mass gathering, Germany, September to October 2010

Abstract: Binary file ES_Abstracts_Final_ECDC.txt matches

Cited by 40 publications

References 7 publications

Communicable diseases as health risks at mass gatherings other than Hajj: what is the evidence?

Communicable diseases as health risks at mass gatherings other than Hajj: what is the evidence?

Modelling disease mitigation at mass gatherings: A case study of COVID-19 at the 2022 FIFA World Cup

Modelling Disease Mitigation at Mass Gatherings: A Case Study of COVID-19 at the 2022 FIFA World Cup

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