Measles is on the rise around the world, and even experts who saw it coming say the increase is “staggering.”

The World Health Organization said in December that its European region (which extends into parts of western and central Asia) saw an “alarming” increase in measles cases – from under a thousand in 2022 to more than 30,000 last year.

John Vertefeuille, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Global Immunization Division, said in a statement that the numbers are “staggering.”

Read more at NPR.

Media stories focusing on vaccine hesitancy can distort reality and drive a false narrative that a large percentage of parents are refusing to get their children vaccinated, according to an editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine by two pediatricians from the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.

The article, published online Saturday in the Perspective section of the prestigious medical journal, said stories indicating widespread vaccine hesitancy among parents are at odds with the facts and can have long-term consequences.

Read more at CU Anschutz Medical Campus.

In the past month, a small outbreak of meningococcal meningitis — which infects the lining of the brain and spinal cord — has been seen in Denver County’s homeless community. That prompted health departments to bring pop-up vaccine clinics to shelters in Aurora. 

Meningococcal meningitis can cause severe symptoms, including fever, vomiting and confusion, and can sometimes lead to death.

Courtney Ronner, a spokesperson for the Denver Department of Public Health and Environment (DDPHE), said Denver County has seen four cases of meningococcal disease in the homeless community since Jan. 12. 

Read more at The Denver Gazette.

Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is a respiratory virus causing infection in the lungs, nose, and throat.

RSV affects all ages — including young infants — and infects about 64 million peopleTrusted Source globally each year.

While RSV symptoms normally feel just like those of the common cold in adults and older children, it can be a much more serious disease in older adults, young children, and babies.

Researchers report that RSV is the most common causeTrusted Source of hospitalization of infants in high-income countries.

The respiratory infection is responsible for about 3.6 million lower respiratory tract hospitalizations in young children each year, with 1.4 million of those in children ages 0 to 6 monthsTrusted Source.

Read more at Medical News Today.

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.