Measles is a highly infectious disease caused by a virus and spreads when a person coughs or sneezes or is in close contact with another person or objects, surfaces. The symptoms of this disease include high fever, runny nose, cough a rash of red spots and watery eyes.
Measles have been vanished from USA since 2 years but recently the health researchers have noticed and mentioned 25 counties in the country where there are high risks of measles having an outburst, many being the most popular regions in USA.
According to CNN’s data collected, it was found that there were 681 measles cases across 22 states this year, being the highest.
The counties cover regions and also include the largest 5 USA cities: Queens County in NYC, Los Angeles County, Chicago’s Cook County, Houston’s Harris County and Phoenix’s Maricopa County.
“You can’t have a new outbreak of measles in the United States without two things happening,” said senior study author Lauren Gardner, a public health expert at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. First, “you have to have measles introduced, which involves infected travelers from other countries. And [second], you have to have a population that’s vulnerable, which means they have low vaccination rates.”
In the United States, it is to be noted that the risk of getting measles is more in areas where there are foreign travelers travelling to and from countries such as India, Japan and Ukraine. These countries are found to have notable outburst of measles and many individuals consider not having the vaccines for this disease. This way they bring measles into the country and other individuals living get affected.
“All of these risks are the result of a global movement of people giving up on vaccines that had once had measles nearly eradicated in the U.S”. Gardner told Live Science. She also mentioned that it is an overall global issue. She further on says, “There are huge outbreaks of measles across Europe, parts of Africa and the Philippines. And a lot of the cases that we’re seeing in the U.S. are imported cases that are spawning local outbreaks.”
The cause as mentioned above being ‘imported’ will not be the main cause forever in the US. She also said that the officials had seen how the measles had extended within the US. She also gave an example of how measles had infected people in Brooklyn but further went on to spreading in New Jersey and Michigan. She also says that counties other than the 25 mentioned above should also be considered as particular risks.
Her research team gathers information of a decade and mentioned that previous data could have helped in determining the outburst of measles in New Jersey. Results also showed that specific regions such as Cook County and Los Angeles County have a risk of measles outburst regardless of not having it.
She mentions that there are many ways to encounter this issue. The most important way to stop measles entering the county is by making individuals vaccinated beforehand. If they are vaccinated, other risk factors as mentioned aren’t really a problem, she says.
According to health researchers, mostly the measles have spread in the USA where group of individuals were not vaccinated.