Measles vaccine is administered in Israel as part of the routine childhood immunization program, at ages 1 and 6 years. In this study, we assessed seropositivity of the Israeli population against measles before the onset and propagation of the 2018-2019 measles outbreak. From the Israel Center for Disease Control National Serum Bank, 3,164 samples collected during 2015 were tested for measles antibodies. All the tests were performed using Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA) commercial kit (Enzygnost, Anti-Measles Virus/IgG: Behring, Marburg, Germany). The overall seropositivity rate for measles was 90.7%. The seropositivity rate at 6 months and younger was 48.9%, and decreased to 3.8% among infants aged 6-11 months. Seropositivity increased to 90.7% in the 1-4-year age group, and reached 96.1% for 5-9 year-old children. Our results suggest high immunity in the Israeli population against measles virus, but not high enough to prevent outbreaks because of pockets of specific population groups with low immunization coverage. Infants between ages 6 and 11 months and children younger than 2 years had the lowest seropositivity rates being the age groups with the highest attack rates of measles during the epidemic of 2018. Efforts should be aimed at avoiding any delay in vaccination once a child reaches the age of 1 year and improving immunity levels in children aged 1-4 years.

Introduction: We describe our evaluation of the Abbott SARS-CoV-2 IgG assay on the Architect immunoassay analyser. Methods: We assessed assay precision, sensitivity, specificity, positive/negative predictive values (PPV/NPV), cross-reactivity (influenza/dengue/hepatitis B and C/rheumatoid factor/anti-nuclear/double-stranded DNA/syphilis) and sample throughput in samples from real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) positive patients/healthcare workers (HCWs)/pre-pandemic samples. We compared the cut-off indexes (COIs) between all control samples (HCWs and pre-pandemic) to generate an optimised COI limit for reactivity. Results: The assay specificity was 99.8% (n = 980) and sensitivity was 45.9-96.7% (n = 279). When tested >= 14 days post-positive RT-PCR (POS), the PPV/NPV was 96.4%/99.8%. The difference between the COIs of HCWs/pre-pandemic samples was small (0.01, p < 0.0001). There was minimal cross-reactivity with other antibodies. A lower COI limit for reactivity (>= 0.55, using the 99th percentile COI of our controls and ROC analysis) improved diagnostic sensitivity, especially at 0-6 days POS (45.9-55.8%), with a small decrease in specificity (98.9%). The assay throughput was 100 samples in 70 min. Conclusion: The Abbott SARS-CoV-2 IgG assay shows excellent performance in patients >= 14 days POS. The difference between the COIs of HCWs and pre-pandemic samples was numerically small. A lower COI limit improves assay sensitivity with a slight decrease in specificity.