CDC/MMWR Watch [to 31 January 2015]
http://www.cdc.gov/media/index.html

:: Transcript for CDC Telebriefing: Measles in the United States, 2015
Thursday, January 29, 2015 at 03:30 E.T.
[Excerpt; Editor’s formatting]
…ANNE SCHUCHAT: Thank you so much for joining us this afternoon. I want to talk to you today about measles and here’s why. It’s only January and we have already had a very large number of measles cases. As many cases as we have all year in typical years. This worries me and I want to do everything possible to prevent measles from getting a foothold in the United States and becoming endemic again. I want to make sure that parents who think that measles is gone and haven’t made sure that they or their children are vaccinated are aware that measles is still around and it can be serious and that MMR vaccine is safe and effective and highly recommended.

From January until January 1 until January 28, 2015, a total of 84 people in 14 states have been reported as having measles. Most of these cases are part of an ongoing large multistate outbreak linked to the Disneyland resort theme parks in Orange County, California. CDC is working with state and local health departments to control this outbreak which started in late December.

Many of you know that in 2014, the U.S. experienced the highest number of measles cases we had reported in 20 years, over 600. Many of the people who got measles last year were linked to travelers who had gotten measles from the Philippines, where an extremely large outbreak of over 50,000 cases was occurring. Although we aren’t sure exactly how this year’s outbreak began, we assume that someone got infected overseas, visited the Disneyland parks and spread the disease to others.

Infected people in this outbreak here in the U.S. this year have exposed others in a variety of settings including school, day cares, emergency departments, outpatient clinics and airplanes. The information that we have is preliminary and the data are changing. We will be updating our website every Monday with the latest total counts. However, based on what we know now, we’re seeing more adults than we have seen in a typical outbreak. Children are also getting measles. The majority of the adults and children that are reported to us for which we have information did not get vaccinated or don’t know whether they have been vaccinated. This is not a problem with the measles vaccine not working; this is a problem of the measles vaccine not being used…

…Measles is still common around the world and we estimate about 20 million cases each year. In 2013, about 145,700 people died of measles across the world. Measles can come into our country easily through visitors or when Americans travel abroad and bring it back. It can be a serious disease for people of all ages. Even in developed countries like the U.S., for every thousand children who get measles, one to three of them die despite the best treatment. In the U.S. from 2001-2013, 28% of young children who had measles had to be treated in the hospital. Measles can also result in complications. In children they can develop pneumonia, lifelong brain damage or deafness. Of course measles spreads when an infected person breathes, coughs, or sneezes and people don’t always know they are infectious, because you can spread the disease before the rash is evident…

…This [outbreak] is a wake-up call to make sure we keep measles from regaining a foothold in our country protecting our most vulnerable babies and others, by assuring everyone who can be protected from measles is appropriately vaccinated. The very large outbreaks we have seen around the world often started with a small number of cases. I have told you before that France went from about 40 cases a year to over 10,000 cases in a year. It’s only January and we have already had 84 cases. Let’s work together to keep these numbers down and to keep measles from returning to plague our communities….

:: MMWR Weekly, January 30, 2015 / Vol. 64 / No. 2
– Update on the Epidemiology of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-CoV) Infection, and Guidance for the Public, Clinicians, and Public Health Authorities — January 2015
– Public Health Response to Commercial Airline Travel of a Person with Ebola Virus Infection — United States, 2014
– A Plan for Community Event-Based Surveillance to Reduce Ebola Transmission — Sierra Leone, 2014–2015