The CDC released a report this Wednesday on measles cases across the country. In the first six months of 2018, 107 cases of measles across 21 states were reported to the CDC.
- The majority of people who got measles were unvaccinated.
- Measles is still common in many parts of the world including some countries in Europe, Asia, the Pacific, and Africa.
- Travelers with measles continue to bring the disease into the U.S.
- Measles can spread when it reaches a community in the U.S. where groups of people are unvaccinated.
The sort of good news is that this is not a great rise in cases, but as the CDC details, the largest measles numbers in recent years have tended to result from large outbreaks in unvaccinated communities. In 2014, 383 cases were linked to an outbreak in the unvaccinated Amish communities of Ohio. In 2015—one of the highest recorded years of measles cases in the United States, since the advent of the vaccination—took place in connection with a California amusement park and spread across the state and country, endangering babies and those with compromised immune systems.
If you and your loved ones are healthy enough to be vaccinated and have yet to be vaccinated, please get your doctor to set up that appointment. It’s a small pin prick, and it can save lives.