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READ MORE: CDC asks to CANCEL flights after finding measles on planes
Experts are warning of a national decline in the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccination rate among US children as cases continue to spike in the country.
A new study found uptake of the vaccine among children declined in eight in 10 US counties last year. Overall, vaccine rates fell three percent across the country.
It means that merely 91 percent of children are vaccinated against measles, which is well below the 95 percent need to prevent the disease from spreading and causing death.
The Johns Hopkins University researchers warned that if vaccination rates continue to fall, measles is likely to completely return and become a common infection among Americans.
As of last week, more than
1,000 confirmed cases and at least three deaths
in the US have been reported – the first measles-caused deaths in a decade.
A majority of those infected as well as the all of the deceased had not received their MMR vaccine – primarily due to vaccine hesitancy and misinformation, experts say.
Without the MMR vaccine, which is 97 percent effective at stopping infections, measles is thought to be the
most infectious disease in the world
.
It causes tiny white spots inside the mouth, flat red spots on the neck, torso, arms, legs, and feet, ear infections and an intense fever.
In terms of when to get vaccinated, experts say children need two doses of MMR vaccine: the first dose at age 12-15 months, and the second dose at age 4-6 years.
Babies ages 6-11 months should get an early dose if traveling internationally. Adults should also check to see if they are immune to measles.
In the study, the researchers collected two-dose MMR vaccination data on kindergarteners (children aged five years old) for each school year starting 2017-2018 to 2023-2024 in 2,066 counties across 38 states.
The scientists analyzed the collected data through multiple statistical models to find out how many children were vaccinated.
Out of the studied counties, 78 percent or 1,614 counties reported drops in MMR vaccination rates.
The average county-level vaccination rate was also seen to fall from 93.92 percent pre-Covid pandemic to 91.26 percent post-pandemic.
Only four of the 33 states studied, only California, Connecticut, Maine and New York reported an increase in the vaccine uptake.
Lauren Gardner, senior author and director of Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Systems Science and Engineering said of the results: ‘This open, high resolution dataset provides a critical resource to explore and better understand the country’s vaccination landscape and its implications for the risk of measles spread.’
They also noted that with the exception of 2019, this year is the highest number of cases reported in the US in a single year in over three decades – with the vast majority of cases occurring in unvaccinated children.
The study was published today in the JAMA Network Journal.
If one person has measles, up to 90 percent of the people close to that person who are not immune will also become infected.
The average measles patient would infect up to 18 others if they were also not vaccinated.
People who had the original Covid strain, by comparison, infected on average just two people, though this number rose considerably with new variants.
If unvaccinated, about one in five people who are infected are hospitalized while one in 20 children develop pneumonia.
The last time measles was this rife in the US was in 2019, when there were 1,274 cases reported for the entire year.
Prior to that, the biggest outbreak was in 1990, with numbers spiking to more than 27,000.
Currently, the affected states are: Arizona, California, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York City, New York State, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, and West Virginia.
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Of these cases, three-quarters are in children under the age of 19.
Measles was officially eradicated in the US in 2000 amid a successful vaccination campaign.
At the time, the
CDC
described achieving measles elimination status in the US as a ‘historic public health achievement’.
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