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The United States is at the heart of the second largest measles outbreak since this highly contagious disease was officially eliminated in 2000.
Last week, approximately 560 cases were reported to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This is the highest since 2014, when there were 667 cases. In recent years, the number of cases dropped to 86 in 2016.
Current cases come from 20 states, but not from Pennsylvania. It takes at least three close cases to be considered an outbreak. Under this standard, epidemics occur in five states, including New York and New Jersey.
Since 2000, measles did not exist in the United States alone, which means that all cases in the United States are due to the infection of a person in a foreign country.
The current epidemic is attributed to the anti-vaccine movement and pockets of people who do not allow their children to be vaccinated for religious reasons.
Doctors say that a 95% vaccination rate can protect schools and communities from measles outbreaks. With so many people vaccinated, the disease has no chance of introducing it. As a result, even people who can not be vaccinated for medical reasons are at low risk.
The overall vaccination rate among Pennsylvania schoolchildren is above the threshold of "collective immunity," according to the latest vaccination data provided by the Pennsylvania Department of Health.
But this does not mean that Pennsylvania is devoid of communities that, because of their low vaccination rates, are vulnerable to epidemics.
In Lancaster County, for example, nearly 10% of students obtained an exemption from routine childhood vaccines, according to a LancasterOnline editorial that called on state legislators to ban non-medical exemptions.
At the state level, 96.8% of children in Pennsylvania received two doses of MMR vaccine during the 2017-2018 school year. The MMR vaccine protects against measles as well as against mumps and rubella, also called German measles.
These figures include public and private schools.
According to the health department, 97% of seventh grade students had the required MMR doses.
Children in Pennsylvania may be exempt from the vaccine for religious, philosophical or medical reasons.
According to the Ministry of Health, 123,377 children were enrolled in kindergarten in 2017-2018. Of these, 559 had benefited from medical exemptions, 1,371 had benefited from religious exemptions and 1,526 had benefited from philosophical exemptions.
In addition, 2,641 persons had been registered on a provisional basis, which meant that they had provided assurances that they were being vaccinated.
According to the health department, 88 kindergarten children were denied admission to school due to lack of required vaccines. Of the seventh graders, 105 were refused for lack of required vaccines.
People who are not vaccinated are likely to become infected if they rub shoulders with someone with measles.
The largest epidemic is in New York and appears to come from people who have traveled to Israel.
An epidemic in Michigan is attributed to a person who came from New York.
Measles involves a high fever, a cough and a rash. However, some people suffer from complications that can be fatal or cause permanent damage. According to the CDC, about one in ten people who contract measles get ear infections and about one in 20 get pneumonia. About one in 1,000 children who develop measles develop swelling of the brain that can lead to deafness or intellectual disability.
According to the CDC, about one in four people who contract measles will need to be hospitalized.
About one in two of every 1,000 children who get measles will die, according to the CDC.
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