Progress Toward Regional Measles Elimination - Worldwide, 2000-2021.

All six World Health Organization (WHO) regions have committed to eliminating measles.* The Immunization Agenda 2021-2030 (IA2030)† aims to achieve the regional targets as a core indicator of impact and positions measles as the tracer of a health system's ability to deliver essential childhood vaccines. IA2030 highlights the importance of ensuring rigorous measles surveillance systems to document immunity gaps and achieve 95% coverage with 2 timely doses of measles-containing vaccine (MCV) among children. This report describes progress toward measles elimination during 2000-2021 and updates a previous report (1). During 2000-2021, estimated global coverage with a first MCV dose (MCV1) increased from 72% to a peak of 86% in 2019, but decreased during the COVID-19 pandemic to 83% in 2020 and to 81% in 2021, the lowest MCV1 coverage recorded since 2008. All countries conducted measles surveillance, but only 47 (35%) of 135 countries reporting discarded cases§ achieved the sensitivity indicator target of two or more discarded cases per 100,000 population in 2021, indicating surveillance system underperformance in certain countries. Annual reported measles incidence decreased 88% during 2000-2016, from 145 to 18 cases per 1 million population, then rebounded to 120 in 2019 during a global resurgence (2), before declining to 21 in 2020 and to 17 in 2021. Large and disruptive outbreaks were reported in 22 countries. During 2000-2021, the annual number of estimated measles deaths decreased 83%, from 761,000 to 128,000; an estimated 56 million measles deaths were averted by vaccination. To regain progress and achieve regional measles elimination targets during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, accelerating targeted efforts is necessary to reach all children with 2 MCV doses while implementing robust surveillance and identifying and closing immunity gaps to prevent cases and outbreaks.

Real-Time CDC Consultation during the COVID-19 Pandemic-United States, March-July, 2020.

CONTEXT: In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC) clinicians provided real-time telephone consultation to healthcare providers, public health practitioners, and health department personnel. OBJECTIVE: To describe the demographic and public health characteristics of inquiries, trends, and correlation of inquiries with national COVID-19 case reports. We summarize the results of real-time CDC clinician consultation service provided during 11 March to 31 July 2020 to understand the impact and utility of this service by CDC for the COVID-19 pandemic emergency response and for future outbreak responses. DESIGN: Clinicians documented inquiries received including information about the call source, population for which guidance was sought, and a detailed description of the inquiry and resolution. Descriptive analyses were conducted, with a focus on characteristics of callers as well as public health and clinical content of inquiries. SETTING: Real-time telephone consultations with CDC Clinicians in Atlanta, GA. PARTICIPANTS: Health care providers and public health professionals who called CDC with COVID-19 related inquiries from throughout the United States. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Characteristics of inquiries including topic of inquiry, inquiry population, resolution, and demographic information. RESULTS: A total of 3154 COVID-19 related telephone inquiries were answered in real-time. More than half (62.0%) of inquiries came from frontline healthcare providers and clinical sites, followed by 14.1% from state and local health departments. The majority of inquiries focused on issues involving healthcare workers (27.7%) and interpretation or application of CDC's COVID-19 guidance (44%). CONCLUSION: The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a substantial number of inquiries to CDC, with the large majority originating from the frontline clinical and public health workforce. Analysis of inquiries suggests that the ongoing focus on refining COVID-19 guidance documents is warranted, which facilitates bidirectional feedback between the public, medical professionals, and public health authorities.