TRACKING EMERGING VIRUSES – MEASLES – APRIL 20, 2025
“Measles costs are accumulating as funding cuts threaten the outbreak response”
By Neha Mukherjee
““Each measles case can be $30,000 to $50,000 for public health response work, and that adds up quite quickly,” Sugerman said Tuesday.
This includes testing, laboratory work, contact tracing, vaccination efforts and health-care costs, according to Dr. Catherine Troisi, an infectious disease epidemiologist with UTHealth Houston.”
“The cost is “going to depend on how severely ill the person is … how much treatment they need [and] how long they’re in the hospital,” Troisi said. Given the contagious nature of the airborne disease, measles cases in hospitals also require proper ventilation and isolation procedures, which add to costs.
In addition to health-care and public health response, experts say there are a vast amount of indirect costs during an outbreak. For example, parents may need to take time off work to care for sick children, or there could be costs associated with transportation to and from facilities, Patenaude said.”
to read the full article go to
https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/17/health/measles-response-funding-cuts/index.html
“I visited American town being hit by world’s most infectious disease… the terrifying reality in ground zero”
By LUKE ANDREWS
“I’m in a busy supplements store in West Texas when a woman walks in coughing as she weaves through the shelves of vitamins.
A store clerk approached, and the two spoke in hushed, urgent tones about a ‘very sick’ child.
She was then quietly directed to a display of cod liver oil bottles labeled ‘for kids’ at the front of the store.
Customers kept browsing, seemingly unaware they may have just been exposed to the most infectious disease on Earth.
I’m in the rural town of Seminole — the epicenter of America’s deadliest measles outbreak in a decade, one that has already claimed the lives of two young girls.”
“Cod liver oil contains vitamin A, which some evidence suggests may help support the immune system as it fights a measles infection. The supplements have been promoted by vaccine skeptic and HHS Secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr.”
to read the full article go to
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-14616373/measles-seminole-outbreak-infections-vaccines.html
“Video shows doctor with measles treating kids. RFK Jr later praised him as an ‘extraordinary’ healer”
By MICHELLE R. SMITH
“A Texas doctor who has been treating children in a measles outbreak was shown on video with a measles rash on his face in a clinic a week before Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. met him and praised him as an “extraordinary” healer.
Dr. Ben Edwards appeared in the video posted March 31 by the anti-vaccine group Kennedy once led, Children’s Health Defense. In it, Edwards appears wearing scrubs and talking with parents and children in a makeshift clinic he set up in Seminole, Texas, ground zero of the outbreak that has sickened hundreds of people and killed three, including two children.
Edwards is asked whether he had measles, and he responded, “Yes,” then said his infection started the day before the video was recorded.”
to read the full article go to
https://apnews.com/article/texas-measles-outbreak-rfk-jr-ben-edwards-2dd7c79d47c64ad2e6d4a4ac3c87ec1f
“3 more states report their first measles case of 2025”
By Riley Hoffman and Youri Benadjaoud
New measles numbersThe CDC confirms that there are at least 800 confirmed cases nationwide across 24 states.
Louisiana, Virginia and Missouri all reported their first measles cases of 2025 this weekend, with at least 27 states reporting at least one case. All three cases were linked to international travel.
to read the full article go to
https://abcnews.go.com/Health/3-states-report-measles-case-2025/story?id=120980928
“Measles outbreaks now declared in 8 states, including Michigan’s first in 5 years”
By Angelica Stabile
“This is the first measles outbreak in Michigan since 2019, with eight total cases detected across the state in 2025.”
“Measles outbreaks have been identified in seven other U.S. states this year, including Texas, New Mexico, Kansas, Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania and California, according to the states’ health departments.”
to read the full article go to
https://www.foxnews.com/health/measles-outbreaks-now-declared-8-states-including-michigans-first-5-years
“US now has 800 measles cases and outbreaks in several states.”
By Devi Shastri
“ Health experts fear the virus will take hold in other U.S. communities with low vaccination rates and that the spread could stretch on for a year.”
to read the full article go to
https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/national-international/measles-outbreak-grows-texas-kansas-indiana-pennsylvania-ohio/3820765/
“N.J.’s herd immunity from measles is gone. Get your kids vaccinated early, experts warn”
By Jackie Roman
“However, New Jersey has lost its herd immunity, putting unvaccinated people, especially children, more at risk — mirroring a trend across the United States as vaccination coverage wanes and outbreaks increase, including two confirmed deaths from measles and one under investigation.
In response to what they call “a growing domestic hazard,” a group of experts is calling for the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices to expand the recommendation of an early additional MMR dose for infants aged 6 to 11 months traveling to locations in the U.S. with measles outbreaks.”
“Public health experts say that measles control depends on herd immunity of 95% vaccination coverage and that rate has been declining in the U.S. and in New Jersey, while the number of people going unvaccinated climbs.”
to read the full article go to
https://www.nj.com/healthfit/2025/04/njs-herd-immunity-from-measles-is-gone-get-your-kids-vaccinated-early-experts-warn.html
“Measles Outbreaks in Canada and Mexico Bring Grim Prognosis”
By Teddy Rosenbluth
“Canada has reported more than 730 cases this year, making this one of the worst measles outbreaks in the country since it declared the virus “eliminated” in 1998. Mexico has seen at least 360 measles cases and one death, most of them in the northern state of Chihuahua, according to Mexican health authorities.
Many of the communities grappling with measles have large Mennonite populations that public health officials have linked to outbreaks. The multinational resurgence has concerned epidemiologists, who fear that simultaneous outbreaks near the U.S. border will make it more difficult to contain the virus.”
“The governor of Nebraska released a measles response plan though the state hasn’t yet reported any cases. New York State officials earlier this month issued a travel advisory about trips to Ontario and several U.S. states, warning that measles is “only a car ride away.”
to read the full article go to
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/17/health/measles-texas-mexico-canada.html
“Life Before the Measles Vaccine. When the virus was endemic, it spread in a world very different from today’s.”
By Stephanie Bai
“Many people who contract measles don’t know right away that they have it. Days after infection, the symptoms can feel like the flu, until the tell-tale blotchy red rash emerges—usually near the hairline at first, later traveling down the biceps, abdomen, thighs, feet, hands. So far this year, 712 people in America are known to have been infected with the highly contagious disease. This number is already higher than last year’s, which totalled 285. The virus has been particularly widespread in West Texas, where two young girls have died—the first measles deaths America has seen in a decade. And the official cause of death of a New Mexico resident who contracted measles remains under investigation.
Each of the three people who died were unvaccinated, renewing the controversy over vaccine hesitancy. It is a stance that has been around for as long as vaccines have. But a time before the measles vaccine—before 1963, when the virus was so widespread that virtually every child was expected to fall ill from it—is beyond the memory of most generations today.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2025/04/measles-vaccine-endemic-outbreak-texas/682499/
“What causes breakthrough measles infections?”
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/measles-breakthrough-infections-causes-vaccine-symptoms-rcna201799
“CDC scraps plan to help Texas schools curb measles over layoffs, employee says”
By Alexander Tin
“CDC officials had initially weighed expanding a service they had been offering to hospitals in Texas — onsite assessments to root out how errors in ventilation and air filtration could be enabling spread of the virus – to other kinds of facilities like schools as well.”
“”Being on the ground allows us to actually look at the filters that are in place, look at the HVAC systems, how they’re set up, how they’re being used, how they’re being monitored. And after seeing what we did, I’m glad we did,” Dylan Neu, who had led the CDC’s ventilation assessments in Texas, told CBS News.
The agency’s teams do careful inspections of the hospital’s facilities, assessing how air is moving, he said, which can be difficult to accurately do over the phone with people unfamiliar with the technical details of how HVAC systems work.
In one example, an isolation room at a hospital was found to have been pressurized wrongly, with air flowing out of the room with the measles patient, Neu said. Another hospital had skipped a key step in setting up an air filter in their waiting room: unwrapping the filter before turning it on.””
While Neu remains on the job for now, he received a notice on April 1 warning him to expect to be laid off by HHS in the coming weeks.
to read the full article go to
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cdc-scraps-plan-to-help-texas-schools-curb-measles-more-layoffs-loom/