The peak of measles cases in Australia is probably due to travelers and not to anti-vaxxers | Australia news

Travelers, not anti-vaxxers, are probably responsible for the outbreak of measles cases in Australia, where 92 cases of the disease were confirmed in 2019, which is close to the number of cases for 2018.

The sudden increase in the number of cases has led Health Minister Greg Hunt to reaffirm the importance of vaccines. "Immunization saves lives," he told reporters. "The measles vaccine is very effective in protecting lives."

But it was unlikely that the number of Australians questioning the effectiveness of the vaccine and opposing vaccination has increased, said experts in infectious diseases. Some Australians do not know that they are no longer immune to the disease, while others have failed to vaccinate their children for reasons of logistics or language barriers.

Australia has had more serious epidemics in the past decade. In 2012, a 25-year-old man who was returning from Thailand from Thailand and was carrying the virus had caused 167 cases in Australia in the following eight months, mainly in southwestern Sydney. Numerous studies examining this epidemic revealed that about 20% of cases involved people of Pacific Island descent. Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders were also overrepresented.

"Many students from the Pacific Islands have apparently missed routine childhood vaccinations before and after they arrived in Australia," a study published in the World Health Organization's Western Pacific Surveillance and Response newspaper reported. He emphasized the importance of community information programs in informing English second-language people about the availability of vaccines and that the disease was so viral that young travelers could cause a measles epidemic even in non-endemic countries. like Australia. In other words, epidemics occurred in areas where people were under-immunized, but these people were not necessarily anti-vaccination.

Associate Professor Anita Heywood of the University of New South Wales, who evaluates immunization programs and gaps in immunization, said that a similar phenomenon was occurring during the most recent outbreak in Australia.

"Australians travel a lot and whatever our control of measles in Australia, if the world does not control it too, we will always have people come back with us, whether Australians returning from overseas or tourists, "she said.

"Only when we reduce the global impact can we prevent these cases in Australia. There are still some cases among those opposed to vaccination, but the anti-vaccination movement is receiving so much airtime, especially on social networks, that many people think that this movement is contributing much more to the 39, epidemic than it is.

In Australia, the problem is that people born between 1966 and 1992 may have received only one dose of the vaccine, two of which are needed for it to be totally effective. People born before 1966, when the vaccine was not available, probably had measles or had been exposed to it and are therefore immune. A second dose was fully funded from 1992 and was administered to high school students.

Those who have only received one dose should take another, especially if they are considering traveling abroad or being in contact with travelers, Heywood said. Many travelers were unaware that they were under-immunized, she added, and did not think about measles when they received their vaccine for diseases more commonly badociated with travel, such as diphtheria or tetanus.

The other potentially susceptible group is that of babies. Babies are protected by their mother's antibodies until they are about nine months old. They routinely receive the vaccine at 12 months; give immunization too early at risk of maternal antibodies still present and kill the virus during injection, rendering it useless.

"I think we're a bit too confident in Australia, we think everyone is doing the vaccination as well as we are," Heywood said. "But France is also struggling with measles and that is because, unlike Australia, the vaccination program is not very well coordinated at the national level and the overall coverage rates are slightly higher. at 80% for a long time. "

At least 90 to 95% of the population vaccinated against the measles virus must be vaccinated, making it one of the most infectious diseases. The droplets of the virus can remain in suspension for about two hours, long after the infected person has left the room. It is three times more infectious than poliomyelitis or smallpox.

Heywood said that the United States was a country where the movement of vaccination had an impact on the rates of infection. Although there are under-immunized pockets for reasons of logistics, accessibility and language barrier, many anti-vaccine campaigns have been reported, especially in Orthodox Jewish communities.

This prompted the health authorities to adopt on Wednesday a very unusual step: to order almost all the inhabitants of a very orthodox Jewish neighborhood of New York City to be immunized against the disease or to be imposed on them. fines.

But in Australia, Peter Collignon, professor of infectious diseases at the Australian National University, said that the number of anti – vaccinations had not changed much overall, although that # 39, he stated that there were pockets containing more anti-vaccinators than in other potentially potentially dangerous areas. their children at significant risk during the epidemic.

"We will not contract a measles outbreak in Australia," he said.