Laboratory confirmation of congenital rubella syndrome in South Korea in 2017: A genomic epidemiological investigation

초록

The WHO Regional Verification Commission certified in 2017 that Korea was the first country in the WHO Western Pacific Region to achieve rubella elimination. A suspected congenital rubella syndrome (CRS) was reported to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in August 2017. The mother of a new-born had visited Vietnam during her pregnancy. CRS was confirmed based on the detection of rubella-specific IgM and rubella RNA in the urine and throat swab. Rubella virus isolated from the throat swab was classified as genotype 2B, and a phylogenetic analysis indicated that this genotype had been imported from Vietnam. This is the first report of CRS confirmed using virus isolation in Korea. Laboratory surveillance plays a critical role in the elimination of rubella through the provision of laboratory testing data, and characterisation of circulating strains. (c) 2020 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

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