The Briefing Room

General Category => Health/Education => Topic started by: ABX on January 30, 2019, 06:57:31 pm

Title: Officials in anti-vaccination ‘hotspot’ near Portland declare an emergency over measles outbreak
Post by: ABX on January 30, 2019, 06:57:31 pm

Quote

A quickly escalating measles outbreak around Portland, Ore., has led health officials in nearby Clark County, Wash., to declare a public health emergency as they warn that people infected with the highly contagious virus have visited schools and churches, a dentist’s office, a Costco, an Ikea and an Amazon locker pickup station.....

.....The high rate of nonmedical exemption for vaccines is what makes the Portland area, which sits across the Columbia River from Clark County, a “hotspot” for outbreaks, according to Peter J. Hotez, a professor of pediatrics and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.

“This is something I’ve predicted for a while now,” he said of the public health emergency in Clark County. “It’s really awful and really tragic and totally preventable.”

Of the confirmed cases, 18 patients are between the ages of 1 to 10 years old. Twenty of the infected individuals had not been immunized against measles, and the vaccination history of the other three remained unverified. One person was hospitalized......


https://www.bing.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/nation/2019/01/23/an-anti-vaccination-hotspot-near-portland-suffers-public-health-emergency-over-measles/ (https://www.bing.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/nation/2019/01/23/an-anti-vaccination-hotspot-near-portland-suffers-public-health-emergency-over-measles/)