PA Public Health Experts & Officials - Accelerating Measles Outbreak

New in The Wall Street Journal: An accelerating measles outbreak in Pennsylvania is now the country’s largest since 1991. The Pennsylvania Department of Health has reported more than 1,000 measles cases in an outbreak that started this spring and accelerated over the summer. This new high comes just months after a measles outbreak in South Carolina sickened 997 people, becoming a three-decade high for a single measles outbreak in the country until now. “We’re living with measles as an ongoing public health threat to the United States,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Brown University Pandemic Center. “It will find its way into these exquisitely vulnerable communities and cause massive outbreaks.” Some Pennsylvania doctors are treating measles for the first time. Measles patients are ushered to negative-pressure rooms to avoid infecting others in hospitals. As the outbreak grows, doctors say they are seeing more patients with rare outcomes of the disease—things like severe pneumonia and encephalitis, a form of brain swelling that can lead to disabilities. Now, the country is on the verge of losing its measles-elimination status, a designation the U.S. achieved in 2000 following robust vaccination efforts. I'll continue to cover these outbreaks in the U.S. Public health experts, doctors and state health officials: I want to hear from you. I can be reached at [email redacted] or on Signal at jencalfas.22. https://lnkd.in/gJmgnihr