With No New Cases Being Reported, The Measles Outbreak Comes To An End

Feb, 2023 - By SMI

The central Ohio measles outbreak that infected 85 children has finally come to an end

The Columbus Public Health officials detected the Outbreak first in the month of November. The outbreak was first reported to start among children and it spread even more as many of the children were unvaccinated. The officials inform, many of these cases are reported to affect children under the age of five. Even though the number of cases were quite high, there weren’t any fatalities, apart from the fact that 36 children had to be hospitalized

Dr Mysheika Roberts, who is the health commissioner for Columbus led the outbreak response. She aims to raise awareness about the severe reasons as to why this outbreak needs to be taken seriously along with the importance of vaccination. The health officials make the use of transparency to let the public know why it is crucial to get children vaccinated.

As recommended by the experts, every child should receive at least two dose of the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine. The first does is given to the children between the ages of 12 to 15 months, and the second dose is to be given to children between the ages of 4 and 6 years old. The first dose is said to be 93% effective in the prevention of measles if a person contract this virus while two doses are complete the expectancy increases to 97%.

The number of new cases have slowed down since the beginning of the winter holidays, and the officials have declared that the outbreak had officially ended with no reports of any new cases within 42 days.

The central Ohio measles outbreak is a good way to learn the importance of vaccination for prevention and spread of such diseases. The officials for now were able to prevent the spread of this crises.