Incoming kindergartener Jeremy Conner, 5, reacts to a Measles, Mumps and Rubella vaccination (MMR) as his father Mark Conner tries to comfort him in Santa Ana, California.
David McNew/Getty Images/TNS
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is urging health care providers to be “on alert” for patients with symptoms of measles — a virus declared eliminated in the U.S. in 2000 — after nearly two dozen cases have been reported across the country in the past month.
Between Dec. 1 and Jan. 23, the CDC has been notified of 23 measles cases, including seven “direct importations” by international travelers and two outbreaks with more than five cases each, according to a letter the federal agency sent to clinicians last week.
Most of the cases were among children and teenagers who had not been vaccinated against the virus, and nine of them were reported by the health department in Philadelphia — a city a two-hour drive from Baltimore. Additionally, the Virginia Department of Health notified people earlier this month that they may have been exposed to measles if they were at Dulles International Airport on Jan. 3 or at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on Jan. 4.
The outbreak may be scary, said Dr. Theresa Nguyen — chair of pediatrics at the Greater Baltimore Medical Center in Towson — but it’s important for parents not to panic.
Instead, she said, “the message is, ‘Get your children vaccinated.’”
The measles vaccine used today — which also protects people against mumps and rubella — was approved by the Food and Drug Administration more than 50 years ago. But the nationwide MMR vaccination rate has fallen by two percentage points over the past two school years, after sitting firmly at 95% for 10 years. In Maryland, the child vaccine exemption rate increased by 0.4 percentage points from the 2021-22 school year to the 2022-23 school year.
Measles, a very contagious, viral illness characterized by a cough, runny nose and pinkeye, hasn’t been endemic in the U.S. in more than 20 years. But in 1998, the progress made in convincing parents to vaccinate their children was jeopardized by the publication of a flimsy study that suggested getting the MMR vaccine may predispose a child to developing autism.
The journal that published the study has since retracted it, and Andrew Wakefield — the paper’s lead author — is now barred from practicing as a physician in the United Kingdom. But the vaccine hesitancy seeded by his research persists today, Nguyen said. And since the coronavirus pandemic, vaccine hesitancy has only grown, she added.
Nguyen recently sent a letter of her own to GBMC’s pediatricians, asking them to be aware of the increase in cases and to add measles to the list of viruses that may explain a child’s fever or cough.
The hospital’s community outreach program is working with a local elementary school to help parents ensure that their children are caught up on their vaccines before an outbreak begins, said Dr. Esther Liu, chair of the department of pediatrics at the University of Maryland Baltimore Washington Medical Center.
