25 Years After Measles Was Eliminated From America, Cases of the Disease Surge to Record High
Outbreaks are growing as the number of vaccinations has dropped dramatically.
Calling the resurgence âconcerning,â the World Health Organization says measles cases are up nearly 3,000 percent in North America in the first half of the year versus the same period a year ago.
The United States has reported 1,277 cases and three deaths this year, according to Johns Hopkins data. The number of cases is the highest in America since the disease was considered eliminated in the country a quarter century ago.
Canada has reported more than 3,100 cases, with one death, and Mexico has nearly 2,600 reported cases and nine deaths.
The Pan American Health Organization says the most affected age groups are children under the age of 5 and adolescents aged 10 to 19. Gaps in routine immunization are helping to fuel outbreaks of a disease that was considered eliminated in America in 2000, when less than 100 cases were reported, the organization says.
Health officials say that 95 percent vaccine rates create a so-called herd immunity that makes it harder for outbreaks to occur, but vaccine rates in America for measles have dropped to about 90 percent, according to the CDC. The numbers have been dropping for years but accelerated during the anti-vaccine movement that has grown since the coronavirus outbreak.
The largest number of cases in the United States this year is centered in Gaines County, Texas, where transmission began within a close-knit, under-vaccinated Mennonite community. It has since spread across at least 26 counties in the western region of Texas and into New Mexico and Oklahoma.
The health and human services secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine skeptic, previously claimed that there is hesitancy in some religious communities to get the MMR vaccine because of a belief it contains the cells of aborted fetuses. Health officials say that perception is inaccurate.
Mr. Kennedy has since suggested on social media that the vaccine is the most effective way to prevent the spread of measles but told parents to do their own research.
A 2019 outbreak in Orthodox Jewish communities in New York was reportedly blamed on low vaccine rates due to anti-vaccine disinformation. That outbreak was contained after health officials carried out a large-scale immunization campaign.
Measles is a highly contagious respiratory illness that spreads through coughing and sneezing. Twelve percent of cases in the current American outbreaks have required hospitalization.
