Measles, Chickenpox gain as vaccinations drop

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ASPartOfMe
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29 Dec 2022, 12:14 pm

Growing vaccine hesitancy fuels measles, chickenpox resurgence in U.S.

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A rapidly growing measles outbreak in Columbus, Ohio — largely involving unvaccinated children — is fueling concerns among health officials that more parent resistance to routine childhood immunizations will intensify a resurgence of vaccine-preventable diseases.

Most of the 82 children infected so far are old enough to get the shots, but their parents chose not to do so, officials said, resulting in the country’s largest outbreak of the highly infectious pathogen this year.
“That is what is causing this outbreak to spread like wildfire,” said Mysheika Roberts, director of the Columbus health department.

The Ohio outbreak, which began in November, comes at a time of heightened worry about the public health consequences of anti-vaccine sentiment, a long-standing problem that has led to drops in child immunization rates in pockets across the United States. The pandemic has magnified those concerns because of controversies and politicization around coronavirus vaccines and school vaccine mandates.

More than a third of parents with children under 18 — and 28 percent of all adults — now say parents should be able to decide not to vaccinate their children for measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) to attend public schools, even if remaining unvaccinated may create health risks for others, according to new polling by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a health-care research nonprofit.

Public sentiments against vaccine mandates have grown significantly since the pandemic, said Jen Kates, a Kaiser senior vice president. A 2019 poll by the Pew Research Center found that less than a quarter of parents — and 16 percent of all adults — opposed school vaccination requirements.

The growing opposition stems largely from shifts among people who identify as or lean Republican, the Kaiser survey found, with 44 percent saying parents should be able to opt out of those childhood vaccines — more than double the 20 percent who felt that way in 2019.

Support for immunization mandates has held steady among Democrats, with 88 percent saying that children should be vaccinated to attend public schools because of the potential risk for others when they are not.
Overall, 71 percent of all adults still support school immunization requirements, compared with 82 percent in 2019.
“The situation about increasing negative sentiment about childhood vaccination is concerning, but in absolute terms, vaccines remain the social norm,” said Saad Omer, director of Yale’s Institute for Global Health and an infectious-disease expert who has studied vaccine hesitancy.

Anne Zink, chief medical officer for Alaska’s health department, said that even in a state with historically lower vaccination rates, childhood immunization rates have yet to return to their pre-pandemic levels. In the years before the pandemic, about 65 percent of Alaskan children 19 to 35 months old had completed their routine childhood immunizations. By the end of 2021, 46 percent had.

“I think there is more mistrust of the government, there’s more questioning of vaccines, and we’ve been having a harder time getting people vaccinated,” said Zink, who is also president of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials.

A few weeks ago, Zink, an emergency room doctor, saw her first case of chickenpox when a young woman walked into the Mat-Su Regional Medical Center in Palmer covered in large, painful lesions. The woman said she and her family did not believe in vaccinations and told Zink she thought chickenpox no longer existed.

In the past, Zink said, herd immunity would have protected the woman against such childhood diseases. But that protection has waned as anti-vaccine sentiment grows, she said.

The growing negative attitudes about school immunization requirements are troubling for health workers. Kentucky officials are urging that people get flu shots after six children — none of whom were vaccinated — died after contracting influenza. South Carolina officials had also promoted childhood vaccinations after two chickenpox outbreaks in March — the first since 2020 — affected nearly 70 people.

School vaccination requirements are among the most effective tools to keep children healthy. All states and the District of Columbia require children to be vaccinated against certain diseases, such as measles, polio and whooping cough, to attend public school. All states grant exemptions based on medical reasons; a growing number allow religious or philosophical exemptions.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends children get two doses of MMR vaccine, with the first dose at 12 to 15 months, and the second dose between 4 and 6 years old. One dose of the vaccine is about 93 percent effective in preventing measles, one of the most infectious pathogens on the planet that can cause serious complications, including death. Two doses are about 97 percent effective at preventing the disease.

In the Ohio measles outbreak, only four of the 82 children had received a single dose of vaccine, according to state data. None were known to be fully vaccinated.

Some of the cases occurred in Columbus’s large Somali community, the second-largest Somali population in the United States after the Minneapolis area, Roberts said. Parents have said they “intentionally delayed” giving their children the measles vaccine because of their fear of autism, she said, despite considerable research disproving any relationship between vaccines and autism. Those fears echoed similar concerns of parents in Minnesota’s Somali community during a 2017 measles outbreak that infected 75 children, mostly unvaccinated preschool kids.

Minnesota is also battling a new measles outbreak — 22 cases — as vaccine hesitancy around the MMR vaccine continues to be an issue, said Doug Schultz, spokesman for the Minnesota health department.

Officials are bracing for more cases in the coming weeks as families travel and gather indoors for the holidays. At least 32 of the Ohio children have been hospitalized, some so sick they required intensive care.
Most of the sickened children — 78 percent — are Black, 6 percent are Asian, 6 percent are White, and 4 percent are Hispanic, according to Columbus officials.

Because the measles virus is so contagious, an overall community vaccination rate of about 90 to 94 percent is needed to keep the virus from causing large outbreaks, according to infectious-disease experts. In the United States, nearly 91 percent of children have received at least one dose of the MMR vaccine by age 2. In the Columbus area, Roberts said, the measles vaccination rate is estimated at 80 to 90 percent, but health-care providers are not required to report data to Ohio’s vaccine registry.

Even if overall coverage in a community is high, measles can transmit easily in clusters of under-vaccinated or unvaccinated people. The Columbus outbreak began when one or two unvaccinated people traveled to countries where measles is still common between June and October and infected others in the community, Roberts said.

In recent years, many of the measles cases reported to the CDC have occurred in underimmunized, close-knit communities, where anti-vaccine misinformation has gained a foothold.


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Kraichgauer
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30 Dec 2022, 12:17 am

Thanks, Anti-Vax idiots!


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lostproperty
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30 Dec 2022, 3:54 pm

At the time the Covid vaccines were first rolled out, I watched a doctor predict that we would end up having to invent a new word for vaccines due to a devastatingly swift and increasing association with high risk, injury and death which would leave people with a total mistrust of vaccines across the board.

Will the situation worsen to the point his prediction of a re-brand is realised? Maybe not, but it certainly seems a more plausible scenario today.



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30 Dec 2022, 6:26 pm

I already had the chickenpox vaccine when I was a baby.


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