A little more than a third of Colorado school districts were at risk of a measles, mumps, or rubella outbreak last year, due to low immunization rates, but new state data shows overall MMR vaccination rates are somewhat improving.

School districts tell CBS News Colorado the key to improving those rates boils down to building relationships with students’ families. 

“It’s about educating the family,” says school nurse Megan Moyer with Kids First Health Care, a company that is contracted by the Adams 14 School District to help with student healthcare during school hours.

Read more at CBS Colorado.

Jessica Fichtel can’t understand why her neighbors chose not to vaccinate their kids and, consequently, increased the risk of her son getting measles? 

The Vancouver, Washington, mom struggled every day to keep her then-6-year-old, Kai, alive while he underwent chemotherapy to fight childhood leukemia during the measles outbreak there in 2019.  

“His life would be in grave danger if he would have been exposed to measles and contracted it,” Fichtel said. 

Read more at CBS.

In 2016, the UK had a major public health win when the World Health Organization (WHO) declared it had eliminated measles. But two years later this status was revoked as cases doubled. Now, the UK is in the midst of a measles emergency with 140 cases reported so far in 2024 alone. How did the country go from elimination to emergency?

While some health experts argue that vaccine hesitancy is not to blame, trends in vaccination suggest the answer is more complicated. While many factors are at play, what is clear is that misinformation is undoubtedly a major threat in spreading killer childhood diseases like measles.

Read more at Gavi.

A historic new study out of Scotland shows the real-world impact of vaccines against the human papillomavirus: The country has detected no cases of cervical cancer in women born between 1988-1996 who were fully vaccinated against HPV between the ages of 12 and 13.

Many previous studies have shown that HPV vaccines are extremely effective in preventing cervical cancer. But the study, published on Monday in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, is the first to monitor a national cohort of women over such a long time period and find no occurrence of cervical cancer.

Read more at STAT News.

A new UCLA-led study shows that pregnant individuals getting vaccinated against COVID-19 lowers the chances of their newborns experiencing respiratory distress (RD). Investigators examined the link between maternal COVID-19 vaccination and RD in neonates born to mothers exposed to SARS-CoV-2 during pregnancy. The risk of RD was significantly lower when the mothers infected during pregnancy were previously vaccinated.

Read more at Contagion Live.

COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations and deaths are still elevated, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says, with the new JN.1 variant accounting for a majority of cases.

There were more than 32,860 COVID-19 hospital admissions in the second week of January, although weekly hospitalizations declined by 9.6%, according to CDC data. 

JN.1, a variant of the Omicron strain, accounts for 85.7% of cases in the U.S., rising from about 60% in early January. However, the CDC has seen no evidence that it causes more severe disease than other variants. 

Read more at Marketplace.

Measles was officially declared eradicated in the U.S. more than 20 years ago, but new outbreaks of the disease are popping up — and experts say declining vaccination rates are jeopardizing herd immunity and increasing the risk.

In Philadelphia, nine cases were reported after a cluster started in a hospital and spread to other medical facilities and a day care center. Measles is a highly contagious and potentially deadly virus that causes a tell-tale rash.

Read more at CBS.

Measles would be gone if we wanted it to be. We’ve had a highly effective, safe vaccine for it for 60 years. But because of rising anti-vaccine sentiments, measles is back, with recent cases in  Philadelphia, New Jersey and Virginia. Unless we tackle the misinformation that is at the root of vaccine hesitancy, more children will get sick from this and other nasty, preventable diseases in 2024.  

The U.S. is not the only high-income country seeing measles outbreaks. Europe saw a thirty-fold increase in cases last year.  In England, the West Midlands is currently experiencing its highest rates since the 1990s, with health leaders urging a national call to action on measles. Officials in Sydney, Australia have recently issued a measles alert as cases are being identified there. The problem is even worse in low-and-middle countries, with measles still common in many countries in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. Globally, there were an estimated 9 million cases and 136,000 deaths in 2022 alone. 

Read more at Time.

Despite having a very effective and easily available vaccine, measles outbreaks have continued to pop up in the United States over the last two decades.

Most recently, there have been eight cases confirmed in Philadelphia since December 2023, all among unvaccinated individuals. Additionally, a person with measles traveled through D.C.-area airports and cases have been identified in Delaware, New Jersey and Washington state, according to local reports.

In 2023, there were 41 confirmed cases of measles, according to incomplete data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Read more at ABC.

Traveling during the holidays comes with many risks — overbooked flights, delays, bad weather and exposure to COVID-19. And now, people can add exposure to measles to the list. Measles is a viral disease that causes a characteristic rash. The Virginia Public Health Department has issued a warning to people who were at Dulles International Airport on Jan. 3 and Ronald Reagan National Airport on Jan. 4 of this year. Specifically those who were near the international arrivals area of the main terminal at Dulles airport between 4:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. on Jan. 3, and to those in Terminal A of the Ronald Reagan airport between 2:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. on January 4, 2024, as they might have been exposed to measles. 

Read more at Salon.