Measles outbreak linked to an international dog show in Slovenia - primary cases and chains of transmission identified in Italy, November to December 2014.

Letters Letter to the editor: Measles outbreak linked to an international dog show in Slovenia – primary cases and chains of transmission identified in Italy, November to December 2014 Regional contact points for measles surveillance. Letter to the editor: Measles outbreak linked to an international dog show in Slovenia – primary cases and chains of transmission identified in Italy, To the editor: Recently, Grgič-Vitek et al. reported a measles outbreak in Slovenia linked to an international dog show held in Vrtjoba/Šempeter from 8 to 9 November 2014, involving 44 cases [1]. Genotype D8 was identified in seven cases and viral sequences were deposited in the World Health Organization (WHO) MeaNS database [1]. In December 2014, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) conducted a Rapid Risk Assessment of the outbreak and recommended that, since the dog show had exhibitors from 27 European countries, national public health authorities from these countries should consider contacting the exhibitors to verify their measles vaccination status and illness histories, and perform contact tracing for identified cases [2]. The dog show was held near the Italian border and over 350 of the 670 registered exhibitors had reported an Italian address. The Infectious Diseases Epidemiology Unit of the Istituto Superiore di Sanità (ISS), in collaboration with regional and local health authorities in Italy contacted the Italian exhibitors, as recommended. We obtained the names of registered exhibitors from the Slovenian authorities through the Early Warning and Response System (EWRS), listed these by region of residence and sent them to the regional health authorities (RHA) of 16 regions. We asked RHAs to (i) verify Figure Number of measles cases linked to an international dog show in Slovenia, by date of rash onset, Italy, November–December 2014 (n=18) Cases were classified according to the European Commission case definitions of 8 August 2012 [3].