title: Epidemiology of communicable disease in small populations.
abstract: We have recently shown how the outbreaks of measles virus infection in small isolated island communities exhibit an organised pattern in the distribution of epidemic sizes and distribution of epidemic durations. More conventional epidemiological analysis tends not to be useful in such highly intermittent dynamical regimes where there is frequent fade-out of infection. In this paper we discuss how our approach can be applied to an analysis of measles epidemics in highly vaccinated communities where susceptibles build up due to lack of vaccine uptake and also because of occasional vaccine failure.
authors.affiliation: Department of Zoology, Wellcome Trust Centre for the Epidemiology of Infectious Disease, University of Oxford, UK.
authors.forename: C J
authors.initials: CJ
authors.lastname: Rhodes
authors.forename: A R
authors.initials: AR
authors.lastname: Butler
authors.forename: R M
authors.initials: RM
authors.lastname: Anderson
mesh_terms: D003141:Communicable Diseases / Q000453:epidemiology; D004196:Disease Outbreaks; D006801:Humans; D008457:Measles / Q000453:epidemiology*; D015233:Models, Statistical; D011153:Population; D006113:United Kingdom / Q000453:epidemiology