Measles outbreak in Switzerland - an update relevant for the European football championship (EURO 2008)

Since November 2006, Switzerland has been experiencing the largest measles outbreak registered in the country since the introduction of mandatory notification for this disease in 1999. The first eight months of this outbreak have already been described in this journal [1]. From November 2006 to 13 February 2008, 1,405 measles cases were reported by physicians or laboratories in Switzerland (1,106 of them in 2007). Of these, 976 cases (69%) occurred in the cantons of Lucerne (29% of the total), Basel-Land (16%), Zurich (11%) Bern (7%), and Aargau (7%). The incidence for the whole country and all ages, calculated for this 15-month period, was 19 cases per 100,000 inhabitants (15 cases per 100,000 for the year 2007). For children under the age of 16 years living in the canton of Lucerne, it was 500 per 100,000.