487— Controlling the Spread of Measles in an Unvaccinated School Population

The Orthodox Jewish population in Rockland County, NY does not vaccinate due to religious beliefs, which allows diseases to spread quickly through the population. A caveman model was created to represent a private Jewish school typical of those in Rockland County, where n.caves = 25 and cave.size = 20 to create a population of 500 unvaccinated students. A measles infection (R₀ = 15) was introduced and infected individuals were removed from the school during the eight day infectious period at a varying number of days after infection, ranging from Day 0 to Day 8 of the infectious period. The data was analyzed for normality using a Shapiro-Wilk test and an ANOVA was performed to determine whether the data was statistically significant. Two boxplot graphs were created, representing the number of infected individuals and the length of the epidemic as a function of the day infected students were removed from the school. Removing children from the school within the first three days after infection significantly decreased the number of individuals who became sick as well as the duration of the outbreak in the school.