1-29-2019
VANCOUVER, Wash. — Public health officials are scrambling to contain a measles outbreak in Clark County and are warning parents to vaccinate their children.
They’re worried that it could take months to contain the highly contagious viral illness due to a lower-than-normal vaccination rate at the epicenter of the crisis.
Dr. John Lynch at Harborview Medical Center says, “Measles is one of the most contagious viruses that we know about . . . if you take an unimmunized group of people and you expose them to measles, about 9 out of 10 of them will become infected.”
The measles outbreak in the Vancouver area has sickened 35 people, with 11 more cases suspected.
Thirty-one patients had not been vaccinated against measles.