25 years ago, officials in the United States considered measles eliminated from the country, but that is no longer the case. The CDC reports in the first two months of the year, there have been 164 confirmed cases.
“I remember thinking, ‘I’ll never, ever have to think or worry about measles,’ and now here it is and the worry is that this could be just the beginning, and things could be getting a lot worse,” said Dr. Brian Mauch, a pediatrician at Lawton Community Health Center.
Mauch said it’s sad to see the spike because the disease is preventable. He said when people aren’t vaccinated against it, the very contagious disease can spread through a community like wildfire.
“They say that if a person is in a room with measles who has the infection themselves, the measles virus they exhale stays in the air for about two hours,” Dr. Mauch said. “So, you can walk into a room that somebody who walked through had measles and pick it up two hours later.”
Dr. Mauch said kids are more likely to get severe illness from measles, but adults can get it and pass it on to their kids. He says if someone gets the disease, the first symptom is a high fever, and a few days after the fever, people may develop spots in the mouth.
“But then, a couple of days after that, they break out in a characteristic rash,” he said. “It usually starts on the face and spreads from the face downward. It usually starts off as flat, red spots, and then they can kinda progress and become a little bumpy.”
Dr. Mauch encourages people who aren’t vaccinated against measles, even if they’re adults, to get vaccinated. Dr. Mauch said 95% of the population needs to be vaccinated for it to be effective.
“In parts of our country and around the world, that number has dropped below 95%, and because it drops below that number, that makes people more susceptible to getting measles, even those who’ve received the vaccines,” he said.
If you haven’t been vaccinated or are wondering when kids get their shots against the virus, he said kids typically get their first dose at 12 months and again at four years old. He said people are 93% protected after their first dose and 97% protected after their second dose.
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