More than a 100 people in 21 states have become sick with measles since the beginning of 2018, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The 21 states in the CDC case count include: Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas and Washington. The District of Columbia is also included in the CDC count.
According to the CDC, 107 people were reported to have measles between January 2018 and July 14, 2018. By comparison, in all of 2017, 118 people from 15 states and the District of Columbia were reported to have measles.
FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb tweeted that it was an “avoidable tragedy.”
A CDC spokeswoman told Patch via email that the agency updates the case count every month. Case counts are not listed for each state to protect patient confidentiality.
The spokeswoman clarified that the 107 cases reported to the CDC in 2018 are not part of one unified outbreak.
The CDC said a confirmed measles outbreak is defined by the World Health Organization as three or more confirmed measles cases, at least two of which are laboratory confirmed, in a health facility/district/block (with an approximate population of 100,000) in a month.
The U.S. saw a record high number of measles cases in recent years in 2014 with 667 cases reported in 27 states. That was the highest number of cases since 2000, the CDC reported. According to the CDC, most of the people who contracted measles in 2014 were unvaccinated.
“Measles can spread when it reaches a community in the U.S. where groups of people are unvaccinated,” the CDC said.
The MMR vaccine is effective in protecting against measles and also protects against mumps and rubella. The CDC notes that the vaccine is very safe. Two doses of the vaccine are about 97 percent effective at preventing measles and one dose is about 93 percent effective, according to the CDC.
Measles is caused by a virus and spreads through the air when an infected person coughs or sneezes.
Photo via Shutterstock
Click Here: geelong cats guernsey 2019