Current U.S. Measles Info for First 4 months of 2018

Measles Cases Info from the CDC

From January 1 to April 21, 2018, 63 people from 16 states (Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Texas) were reported to have measles. No reports, yet, from Georgia.

In 2017, 118 people from 15 states and the District of Columbia were reported to have measles. In 2016, 86 people from 19 states were reported to have measles. In 2015, 188 people from 24 states and the District of Columbia were reported to have measles. In 2014, the United States experienced a record number of measles cases, with 667 cases from 27 states reported to CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD); this is the greatest number of cases since measles elimination was documented in the U.S. in 2000.

• 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.

It is never too late to get a Measles Vaccine if you are unimmunized. If you are planning a trip out of the USA you should definitely look into your Measles Immune status with your doctor or vaccine travel clinic at least a month before you travel. If you have family or friends who have impaired immunity, you should be considerate of them and also confirm that you have Measles immunity. Newborns and young infants can be vulnerable to Measles if it enters our city. There is a small but growing number of persons in Metro Atlanta who are choosing NOT to be immunized, making our area ripe for a Measles outbreak from imported Measles from abroad. We are an international city.

Visit http://www.immunize.org/vis/mmr.pdf to learn more about the Measles vaccine.

Number of measles cases by year since 2010