Measles & Rubella Weekly Monitoring Report - Week 17, 2018: April 22 to April 28, 2018

Epidemiological summary

During epidemiological week 17, 2018 one new laboratory-confirmed case of measles and three secondary cases with epidemiological link to the laboratory-confirmed case were reported by the province of Quebec¹. Three of the cases, including the index case are siblings who recently arrived from Romania as refugees. The fourth case is an extended member of the family who also recently arrived from Romania. None of the cases were vaccinated.  Measles is endemic in Romania and a large outbreak is ongoing. No cases of rubella were reported.

To date in 2018, a total of nine cases have been reported, all cases were imported or import-related.The last rubella case was reported in February 2016.

Figure 1: Number of cases of measles (n=9) and rubella (n=0), by week of rash onset, as reported to the Canadian Measles/ Rubella Surveillance System (CMRSS) and Measles and Rubella Surveillance System (MARS), for the period ending April 28, 2018.  

Geographic distribution

There are currently four active^{Note *} cases of measles reported in Canada.

There are no reported active cases of rubella in Canada.

Figure 2: Distribution of active^{Footnote *}, confirmed measles cases by health region.

Laboratory summary

Measles

In 2018, five cases of measles have been genotyped and the genotypes were D8 (n= 4) and B3 (n=1) (Figure 3).

Figure 3: Distribution of measles genotypes detected in 2018 (n=5) by week^{Figure 2 - Note †} of rash onset.