A 6-week-old baby girl is one of two people with measles who died in Pennsylvania, the Lancaster County coroner said Friday, as the nation’s measles tally hit a new 35-year record of 3,134 cases.
Dr. Stephen Diamantoni told NBC affiliate WGAL that the baby died in August and also had a rare genetic disorder called Amish lethal microcephaly. It’s the second measles-related death in an infant in Lancaster County.
A baby boy died shortly after birth in mid-August after his infected mother went into labor a month early.
At least 115 more people in Pennsylvania, mostly in Lancaster County, have been diagnosed with measles in the last week, the health department said Friday, bringing the state’s outbreak to about 577 cases within the last few months.
Based on new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, measles in the U.S. is still accelerating.
Outbreaks in Wisconsin and Ohio are picking up speed.
Wisconsin has 144 cases, up from 26 a month ago. And 129 cases are now in Ohio, up from just over 60 in the same time period.
The number of people across the country who have gotten sick with measles is undoubtedly much higher because many don’t get tested, experts say.
The new milestone, the highest number of confirmed cases since 1991, is yet another indication that the highly contagious virus is taking over, particularly in areas of the country with plummeting vaccination rates. Outbreaks are driving up healthcare costs and have led to hundreds of hospitalizations, including of children and pregnant women.
“Measles is acting like it’s endemic now. There’s a lot of domestic transmission,” said Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, who directed the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases before resigning last year. “If I were a betting person, I would expect 5,000-plus cases this year.”
The ongoing outbreaks are threatening the country’s status of having eliminated measles in 2000. Nearly everyone who’s had measles caught the virus from a family member, a neighbor or another person within U.S. borders, experts say. Just 16 cases were reported among people visiting from other countries.
Global health officials are eyeing the U.S. measles situation carefully. In November, a group within the World Health Organization, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), will meet to decide whether the U.S. has lost its measles elimination status.
PAHO is looking specifically at whether a single chain of measles transmission has gone on for more than 12 months, as well as whether there are a significant number of cases for which the source of infection is unknown, said Noel Brewer, the chair of an independent committee that assists the CDC in analyzing the country’s measles situation ahead of the PAHO meeting.
“The country’s had measles cases every week for the last 20 months, and at least one regional outbreak has already passed the 12-month mark,” said Brewer, also a professor of public health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “There’s no end in sight.”
Daskalakis likened losing measles elimination status to finding uncontrolled blood pressure during a routine medical checkup: It’s a warning signal of health problems to come.
