A surge in measles cases is threatening the United States’ elimination status, which it has held for more than 20 years.

The US has experienced 338 reported cases of measles between January 1, 2020 and March 28, 2024, according to the CDCTrusted Source. Nearly one-third of those cases (29%) occurred during the first quarter of 2024, representing a 17-fold increase over the average number of cases reported during the same time period between 2020-2023.

Measles is a viral infection that affects the respiratory system and causes a distinct rash. The disease is also highly contagious.

Read more at Healthline.

The U.S. public health laws that require vaccination before entering school have prevented considerable pediatric morbidity and mortality, and yet, they are being eroded, according to public health experts and pediatricians.

In 1981, all 50 states had vaccine mandates for school entry with few exceptions. As of 2019, all 50 states still required some vaccination for school entry, but not necessarily all the CDC-recommended childhood vaccines. However, 29 allowed medical or religious exemptions; 17 allowed medical, religious or “philosophical” exemptions; and some did not require vaccination for homeschooled children, according to the latest report by the CDC’s Public Health Law Program (bit.ly/4amqKmk-IDSE). In addition, the documentation required to obtain an exemption varied by state.

These exemptions mean more parents can send their unvaccinated children to day care or school, endangering people in their communities.

Read more at Infectious Disease Special Edition.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has released new data addressing the link, or lack thereof, between the COVID-19 vaccine and sudden cardiac death in otherwise healthy young adults.

The assessment, conducted between June 2021 and December 2022, investigated the death certificates and vaccination records of 1,292 Oregon decedents aged between 16 and 30 who had died of “cardiac or undetermined” causes.

“The data do not support an association of COVID-19 vaccination with sudden cardiac death among previously healthy young persons,” determined the CDC. The vaccine is still recommended for everyone aged over 6 months.

Read more at USA Today.

Don’t say we didn’t warn you. Pediatricians and public health official have sounded the alarm on declining vaccination rates — and the return of the diseases they prevent — for more than two decades. Measles, a once-controlled illness is now present in 17 states.

Recently release data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that the United States is on pace for about 400 measles cases this year. (There have been nine cases in Florida’s Broward County this year — largely linked to local spread among kids at Manatee Bay Elementary.) The national number will surpass the total number of cases in the last four years. Not since the 2019 outbreak (more than 1,200 cases) in New York or the 2014 outbreak at Disneyland in California have more children been infected. Together, these three outbreaks threaten the America’s status as a measles-free nation.

Read more at Tampa Bay Times.

DAVID M. HIGGINS, a pediatrician at the University of Colorado and Children’s Hospital Colorado, sees patients and also conducts research — but “not the type of research that’s done in the laboratory with beakers and things like that,” as he puts it. Rather, his focus is on health services research, including the study of vaccine delivery, public access to vaccines, and vaccine hesitancy.

He’s particularly concerned about misconceptions regarding vaccine hesitancy, especially among parents — which he says is not as widespread as many believe. As he wrote recently in an essay in The New England Journal of Medicine, co-authored with Sean T. O’Leary: “We believe vaccine hesitancy shouldn’t be normalized when it is not the norm.”

Read more at Undark.

On Monday, a person in Texas tested positive for bird flu — also known as the highly pathogenic avian influenza — after coming in contact with dairy cattle presumed to be infected.

The virus, which is highly contagious among wild birds and poultry, has now spread to dairy farms, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Not only is this the first time that bird flu has been found in dairy cattle, according to the American Veterinary Medical Association, but this is also only the second time a human has contracted the virus in the U.S.

Read more at NPR.

As the flu season ends, Colorado doctors are keeping an eye on the rise of measles cases nationwide.

11 News checked in with UCHealth, who reported a fairly typical 2023/2024 flu season, with a peak around the holidays. Doctors also say there were no major strain changes for COVID-19 this season.

“One difference I would say is that, we still saw a lot of RSV. We think of RSV as certainly being a player in the respiratory season, but not like it is. Some of this also might be that we now have diagnostics, that you test for it more often, so maybe it’s always been there, we just didn’t fully appreciate in adults how many people get RSV, because we think of this as more of a kid’s disease,” said Senior Medical Director for Infection Control and Prevention Dr. Michelle Barron.

Read more at KKTV.

At the start of the 2019–2020 school year, vaccination rates for incoming kindergartners across the country were about 95%, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. At the start of 2022–2023 school year, this coverage dipped to 93%.

While the drop may seem small, it represents hundreds of thousands of children and a slip away from herd immunity for diseases like the measles, according to Neil Maniar, professor of the practice in health sciences at Northeastern University. This places people who cannot be immunized for medical reasons at risk of getting the measles, which is highly contagious and can lead to severe illness.

Read more at Medical Xpress.

Mpox, formerly known as monkeypox, cases are on the rise here in the U.S., with nearly double the number of infections compared to the same time last year, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.

While the magnitude of the outbreak experienced in 2022 – where national cases topped 32,000 – is largely over, some high-risk groups need to continue taking precautions, experts say.

“Most of the cases that we’re seeing reported are either unvaccinated or under-vaccinated, meaning they either never received a vaccine, or they only got one dose,” Dr. Jenni McQuiston, deputy director of the CDC’s high consequence pathogens and pathology division told ABC News.

Read more at ABC.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 49 countries are now reporting measles outbreaks.

The CDC stated on March 22, 2024, that travelers to these countries, including the United States, are at risk of measles if they have not been fully vaccinated at least two weeks prior to departure or have not had measles in the past and travel internationally.

The CDC says the majority of measles cases imported into the United States occur in unvaccinated U.S. residents who become infected during international travel.

Read more at Precision Vaccinations.