RHODE ISLAND — U.S. measles cases are nearly triple what they were last year.
Last year, the nation saw 58 measles cases in four outbreaks. This year, there have been 13 outbreaks, the largest of them traced to a migrant shelter in Chicago in March, in which 60 illnesses have been linked.
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As of Tuesday afternoon, there haven’t been any outbreaks in Rhode Island, but there have been cases close by in Massachusetts, New York, and New Hampshire. Other states affected include Michigan, Minnesota, Oregon and Vermont, according to the CDC. In Massachusetts, the case was the first in three years.
The CDC said the current uptick in cases is due to an increase in vaccine hesitancy since the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as a global uptick in measles cases.
About 85 percent of U.S. measles cases this year were among people who haven’t been vaccinated or had an unknown vaccination status, and 10 percent were among people who had taken only one dose of MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine.
In some U.S. communities, the number of people protected against measles by the vaccine has fallen below the 95 percent coverage level needed to prevent measles outbreaks.
In Rhode Island, 96.9 percent of kindergarteners in the 2022-23 school year were up-to-date on their MMR vaccinations, according to CDC data. Nationwide, 93 percent of kindergartners that year had received two doses of MMR vaccine, compared to 93 percent in the 2019-20 school year, the data shows.
Measles was declared eradicated from the United States in 2000, a status threatened by a large measles outbreak in 2019, which resulted in 1,200 cases, mostly associated with outbreaks in Orthodox Jewish communities in New York. The 2024 measles outbreak is the highest since then.
Before the vaccine became available in 1963, between 3 million and 4 million people were infected every year, with about 400 to 500 of them dying.
Measles is highly contagious. A sick person can spread it to 90 percent of the people in close contact if they are not immune, and the virus can remain in the air for up to two hours after an infected person leaves.
Common symptoms include a high fever, cough, pink eye (conjunctivitis), runny nose, white spots in the mouth, and a rash that typically starts on the face and spreads downward to the feet.
Between 1 and 3 of every 1,000 children infected with measles die from complications of measles, which can include pneumonia and swelling of the brain.
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