Home » Vaccine Preventable Diseases » The 2019 Measles Outbreaks Post-Mortem

The 2019 Measles Outbreaks Post-Mortem

You might remember that 2019 was a horrible year for measles.

You might have forgotten just how bad the 2019 measles outbreaks were as the COVID-19 pandemic took over, but if we don't quickly remember, we are headed to even bigger outbreaks.
You might have forgotten just how bad the 2019 measles outbreaks were as the COVID-19 pandemic took over, but if we don’t quickly remember, we are headed to even bigger outbreaks.

But do you have any idea just how bad it really was though?

The 2019 Measles Outbreaks in the United States

In 2019, we had at least 1,282 cases of measles in the United States – the greatest number of cases since 1992.

During these outbreaks:

  • eighty-nine percent of measles patients were unvaccinated or had an unknown vaccination status
  • 10% were hospitalized, including several who were admitted to the ICU
  • serious complications included pneumonia and encephalitis
  • only 6% were originally imported from other countries, unlike other years when almost all cases were closely related to an imported case.
  • 5,578 out of 23,252 students were excluded from school in Rockland County
  • the majority of the cases were in a relatively few, very large outbreaks in close-knit communities in Brooklyn, Rockland County, Michigan, and the Pacific Northwest, among clusters of intentionally unvaccinated children and adults
  • we saw the largest outbreak in US (Brooklyn, with 654 cases) since 1992
  • we had the longest outbreak in US (Rockland County, at 51 weeks) since measles was eliminated
  • we came extremely close to losing our status as having eliminated measles in the United States

And tragically, at least one person died.

There was at least one measles death in 2019.
There was at least one measles death in the US in 2019.

A 37-year-old died with measles during the 2019 measles outbreaks in the United States.

We also know that the cost to contain the outbreaks was over $42 million!

The 2019 Measles Outbreaks

Worldwide, measles surged in 2019, reaching the highest number of reported cases in 23 years.

And that came with a record number of measles deaths.

Over 207,500 people died with measles in 2019 worldwide, with measles deaths jumping nearly 50 percent since 2016.

Over 207,500 people died with measles in 2019 worldwide, with measles deaths jumping nearly 50 percent since 2016.

What else do we know?

  • four countries (Albania, Czechia, Greece and the United Kingdom) lost their measles elimination status in 2019
  • 30 EU/EEA Member States reported 13,207 cases of measles in 2019, with at least 10 deaths, with deaths in Romania (5 deaths), France (2), Hungary (1), Italy (1) and United Kingdom (1), including two deaths in infants less than 12 months old.
  • countries with the largest outbreaks included DR Congo (310,000 cases and 6,000 deaths), Madagascar (112,000 cases and 748 deaths), Philippines (47,871 cases and 632 deaths), Ukraine, and India

Of course, we also know that measles is a vaccine-preventable disease!

We have backtracked recently on progress in stopping measles.
Things were much worse in the pre-vaccine era.

And even with recent increases, we are greatly below the number of people who suffered and died with measles in the pre-vaccine era.

Where are we going from here?

We don’t know yet…

We certainly know where we can go – right back towards our goals of stopping measles.

Are you vaccinated and protected with two doses of MMR vaccine? Are your kids?

More on the 2019 Measles Outbreaks

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

%d bloggers like this: