An age-structured model of pre- and post-vaccination measles transmission

Abstract

An infection like measles does not spread uniformly in populations from Europe and North America. Of special importance is a pronounced age-dependency in the contact rates, because of increased infection transmission within schools. Therefore an age-structured epidemiologic model is investigated here, which also pays attention to the fact that children are promoted grade-wise into and out of school. Simulation results are contrasted with pre- and post-vaccination measles data from England and Wales and the model is shown to perform better than previous global mass-action models.