Measles seems poised to make a comeback in America. Two adults and two children staying at a migrant shelter in Chicago have gotten sick with the disease. A sick kid in Sacramento, California, may have exposed hundreds of people to the virus at the hospital. Three other people were diagnosed in Michigan, along with seven from the same elementary school in Florida. As of Thursday, 17 states have reported cases to the CDC since the start of the year. (For
Sitting next to someone with a hacking cough on a crowded plane or train, hearing the friend you had a drink with last night has since tested positive for Covid, or your child’s schoolfriend has thrown up in the classroom, most of us fear the worst and wonder if, or simply just when, we’ll come down with the same lurgy.
With the winter flu and vomiting bug seasons well underway, Covid infections still circling — and now news of measles
The young Muslim father who answered the door of the big detached house in the heart of Birmingham’s Sparkbrook district did not wish to give his name but was happy to speak about the measles outbreak in the city. The crucial question: did his son, who goes to the local primary school, get the MMR jab? ‘Neither I nor my wife would allow him to have it on religious grounds,’ he replied politely and without hesitation.
The measles jab contains
Pop-up clinics dishing out MMR jabs are being set up in schools in a push to boost vaccines as cases of measles surge.
The NHS has sent letters to parents of six to 11-year-olds in England urging them to make an appointment with their GP if their child has not had both doses.
They have also issued reminders to 1million people aged 11 to 25 in London and the West Midlands, the two epicentres of the outbreak, encouraging them to
Fears of an impending measles resurgence today sparked a national ‘call to action’ by health chiefs who are alarmed over vaccination rates slumping to a 10-year low.
As few as half of children have had both measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) jabs in parts of London.
Similarly low levels are also seen in Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham.
Dame Jenny Harries, chief executive of the UKHSA, begged parents to check their child’s immunisation status, warning that the public had ‘forgotten what
In September 1957—two years after church bells rang in celebration of the new polio vaccine, two years after people rejoiced in the streets, two years after Americans began lining up for their shots—the proportion of children fully vaccinated against polio remained at about 50 percent.
Supply was not the problem. Nor were doubts about the vaccine’s safety or efficacy, concluded a report from around that time by the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, now known as the March of Dimes,
