The Pennsylvania Department of Health said on Tuesday, Aug. 25, that the two people who died were unvaccinated and lived in Lancaster County, the epicenter of a statewide measles outbreak that has sickened hundreds.
“Because measles was largely eliminated in the [state] for more than three decades, people are not familiar with this disease and don’t fully understand the potential severity of the illness,” said Dr. Debra Bogen, Pennsylvania’s health secretary, in a statement.
Measles is a highly contagious viral disease that can cause high fever, a tell-tale rash, cough, and other symptoms. The disease can be mild for some, but about one in four people sickened with measles is hospitalized. Young children, pregnant women, and the elderly are among those who are at risk of more severe disease.
“As a physician, I want to make sure that people understand that the MMR vaccine is safe and provides the best protection we have against measles,” said Bogen.
Vaccination rates began notably declining in the U.S. during the COVID pandemic and have continued dropping amid increasing anti-vaccine rhetoric and policy under the Trump Administration. On Aug. 10, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that called for U.S. children to receive fewer vaccines and ordered the MMR vaccine to be split into three separate shots, despite a lack of scientific evidence to back the changes.
Doctors and vaccine scientists said Trump’s executive order and comments were unscientific and misleading. "As measles cases reach a 35-year high in the U.S. and with cold and flu season quickly approaching, [the] executive order on vaccines is not only disheartening but dangerous,” Dr. Andrew Racine, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), said in a statement at the time.
An additional early dose of the vaccine can also be given to children aged 6 to 11 months under some circumstances, says Dr. Elizabeth Murray, a pediatric emergency medicine physician in Rochester, N.Y. “With the ongoing measles outbreak, make sure your children are immunized. If your child is under age 1, talk to your doctor. Depending on how much measles is circulating where you live, your doctor may recommend an earlier dose,” she says.
For people fully vaccinated after 1968, however, there is no need to get a booster, the CDC says, as two doses of the vaccine should offer adequate, lifelong protection.
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