TUESDAY, Jan. 9, 2024 (HealthDay News) — The Philadelphia Department of Public Health is tracking a measles outbreak, which so far has sickened eight city residents.
Philadelphia health care staff are “working to identify everyone who may have been exposed, checking their vaccine status, warning them that they may have been exposed, and issuing quarantine and exclusion recommendations where necessary,” the city said in an update.
Measles vaccines provide excellent protection against the virus, but growing antivaxxer sentiments in recent years mean immunization rates have waned. Philadelphia has a measles vaccination rate of 93 percent among its children, but one city health official told ABC News that all of the eight cases have occurred among unvaccinated individuals.
The outbreak began in early December, when an unvaccinated child with measles was admitted to a hospital and spread the illness to three other children while there, ABC News reported. At least three of the eight cases have resulted in hospitalization.
One in every five cases of measles is so serious it requires hospitalization. The disease can prove fatal. According to the Philadelphia experts, “Nearly one to three of every 1,000 children who become infected with measles will die from respiratory and neurologic complications,” such as encephalitis or pneumonia.
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