Measles moving around; Health department urges for vaccinations

As of April 29, there have been more than 700 measles cases in the U.S. There have been 13 individual outbreaks in 22 different states.This outbreak has hospitalized over 66 people with many of them having pneumonia. One of the biggest outbreaks is in New York, where the outbreak has spread longer and infected more people than any other outbreak.

    Officials in New York have closed seven Orthodox schools for failing to meet vaccination standards but five reopened after they showed they were turning unvaccinated children away.

    In 2000, it was reported that measles were considered nearly eradicated in the U.S. by health officials. However the disease has come back in the past years due to the fear that vaccines caused more health issues than helped.

   According to the New York Times “the C.D.C. said, was sparked by 126 infections acquired by travelers overseas since early 2018. The bulk of them occurred in Israel, Ukraine and the Philippines, but cases have also come from Thailand, Germany, Britain and other countries.”

    The virus is very contagious, when an infected person talks or coughs the disease can stay in the area for an hour and 90% of who come in contact with the disease and are susceptible will be infected.

    Now the infection has reached two maryland residents. Both of these people live in the same household and contracted the disease from a different state. To prevent an outbreak  the state health department gave 1,200 measle vaccines to baltimore county for a clinic for adults with no previous vaccination.

    Science teach Mr.Tim Dougherty comments that this outbreak is “ a preventable disaster” completely unnecessary”.  He added that the disease had been “completely eradicated” and that “we had zero cases in the year 2000 and now we have 700 in the United States.”

  The science teacher believes that vaccinations are an effective way to prevent outbreaks “If you look at the science you might have 1 case out of 100,000 cases that react negatively, it doesn’t cause Autism, it has no connection and it may save thousands of lives doing it.”