Measles Spreading Across Nation, Including In Delaware
By Steve Patterson
NEWARK, Del. (CBS) - A growing list of health professionals -- including officials from the Centers for Disease Control -- are issuing a warning: there is a measles outbreak and it is expanding at an alarming rate.
"This is one of the most contagious infections," says Delaware Public Health Director Dr. Karyl Rattay. "If you're not vaccinated and in close contact with the infection, you have a 90% chance of being infected."
The CDC is now reporting more than 100 cases of measles across 14 states stemming from an outbreak traced to Disneyland in California.
Since then, there are more isolated incidents in the Northeast.
An infected college student boarded an Amtrack train in New York. A Delaware woman comes back to New Castle County with the infection from traveling abroad.
"It happens because there are more unvaccinated individuals in our population now than there was like a decade ago," says Dr. Rattay.
Dr. Rattay says an anti-vaccination movement started over the last 15 years:
"A small segment of the population really felt the MMR vaccine was causing autism. We have more science now than ever before to say there just is no connection."
In most of the current measles cases, the infected were not vaccinated.
"If a child has received both doses of the vaccine than they're 97% protected," says Dr. Rattay. "That's pretty good."
According to the CDC, the number of kindergarten-aged children last year in Pennsylvania who failed to get the measles vaccine was nearly 15-percent..its second highest rate among states in the country.