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The United States has registered 41 new cases of measles last week, bringing the total number of cases of the year to 981 in the worst outbreak of the disease since 1992, health officials said Monday.
PHOTO FILE: A vial of measles, mumps and rubella vaccine (MMR) at the community health clinic in Seattle, WA, March 20, 2019. Photo taken on March 20, 2019. REUTERS / Lindsey Wbadon / File Photo
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REUTERS: The United States registered 41 new cases of measles last week, bringing the total number of cases of the year to 981 in the worst epidemic of the disease since 1992, health officials said Monday. .
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that the number of cases of this highly contagious and sometimes deadly disease increased by 4% in the week ending May 31 compared with the previous week. The 2019 epidemic, which has spread to 26 states, is the worst since 1992, when 2,126 cases were recorded.
Federal health officials blame this year's epidemic on American parents who refuse to vaccinate their children. Unlike scientific evidence, these parents believe that the ingredients of the vaccine can cause autism.
The disease has mainly affected children who have not received the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine, which confers immunity to the disease.
CDC officials said Thursday that the epidemic has exceeded the total number of cases per year over the past 25 years, exceeding the 963 confirmed cases in 1994.
Measles was declared eliminated in the United States in 2000, which means that there has been no continuous transmission of the disease for one year. Nevertheless, cases of viruses occur and spread through travelers from countries where measles is common.
CDC officials warned that the country was at risk of losing its measles elimination status if the ongoing outbreak, which began in October 2018 in New York, lasted until October 2019.
"Measles is preventable and the way to end this epidemic is to ensure that all children and adults who can be vaccinated are vaccinated," CDC director Robert Redfield said in a statement. "I want to rebadure parents that vaccines are safe, they do not cause autism."
The epidemic has increased since 82 people in 2018 and more than 40 people in 2019 brought measles to the United States from other countries, most often in Ukraine, Israel and the Philippines, announced federal officials.
(Report by Gabriella Borter in New York and Ankur Banerjee in Bengaluru, edited by Shailesh Kuber and Diane Craft)
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