Imagine a time when an estimated 4 million people in the United States were infected with measles each year, of which nearly 50,000 required hospitalization and 500 died. Although it seems almost impossible today, that was reality in America in the 1950s. And the global numbers were even more staggering, with an estimated 30 million cases and 2 to 4 million deaths annually.
It was in 1963 that the first measles vaccine was licensed in the United States, and an improved version became available in 1968. The vaccine was so effective that by 2000, measles was declared eliminated in the U.S. by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. However, memory can be short-lived, and over the past two decades, there has been a decreasing rate of childhood vaccinations in the U.S. and worldwide. This has once again opened the door for measles virus, with over 1,200 cases being reported in the U.S. in 2019 and nearly 200,000 measles deaths globally that year.