Tag: Measles

Vaccines Fast Facts | CNN

Post By Health , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,



CNN
 — 

Here’s a look at information and statistics concerning vaccines in the United States. For vaccines related to coronavirus, see Coronavirus Outbreak Timeline Fast Facts.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) provides vaccine recommendations by age, as well as by disease.

For more than 100 years, there has been public discord regarding vaccines based on issues like individual rights, religious freedoms, distrust of government and the effects that vaccines may have on the health of children.

Exemptions to vaccines fall into three general categories: medical, religious and philosophical.

As of May 25, 2022, 44 states and the District of Columbia have enacted legislation allowing religious exemptions from vaccines, and 15 states allow philosophical (non-spiritual) exemptions.

1796 – Edward Jenner develops the smallpox vaccine, the world’s first successful vaccine.

1855 – Massachusetts mandates that school children are to be vaccinated (only the smallpox vaccine is available at the time).

February 20, 1905 – In Jacobson v. Massachusetts, the US Supreme Court upholds the State’s right to compel immunizing against smallpox.

November 13, 1922 – The US Supreme Court denies any constitutional violation in Zucht v. King in which Rosalyn Zucht believes that requiring vaccines violates her right to liberty without due process. The High Court opines that city ordinances that require vaccinations for children to attend school are a “discretion required for the protection of the public health.”

1952 – Dr. Jonas Salk and his team develop a vaccine for polio. A nationwide trial leads to the vaccine being declared in 1955 to be safe and effective.

1963 – The first measles vaccine is released. In 2000, the CDC declares the US has achieved measles elimination, defined as “the absence of continuous disease transmission for 12 months or more in a specific geographic area.” While the US has maintained measles elimination since, there are occasional outbreaks.

1986 – Congress passes the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act. This coordinates vaccine activities across several government agencies to monitor vaccine safety, requires vaccine information statements are provided to those receiving vaccines, and creates the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program to compensate those injured by vaccines on a “no fault” basis.

March 19, 1992 – Rolling Stone publishes an article by Tom Curtis, “The Origin of AIDS,” which presents a theory that ties HIV/AIDS to polio vaccines. Curtis writes that in the late 1950s, during a vaccination campaign in Africa, at least 325,000 people were immunized with a contaminated polio vaccine. The article alleges that the vaccine may have been contaminated with a monkey virus and is the cause of the human immunodeficiency virus, later known as HIV/AIDS.

August 10, 1993 – Congress passes the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act which creates the Vaccines for Children Program, providing qualified children free vaccines.

December 9, 1993 – Rolling Stone publishes an update to the Curtis article, clarifying that his theory was not fact, and Rolling Stone did not mean to suggest there was any scientific proof to support it, and the magazine regrets any damage caused by the article.

1998 – British researcher Andrew Wakefield and 12 other authors publish a paper stating they had evidence that linked the vaccination for Measles, Mumps and Rubella (MMR) to autism. They claim they discovered the measles virus in the digestive systems of autistic children who were given the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine. The publication leads to a widespread increase in the number of parents choosing not to vaccinate their children for fear of its link to autism.

2004 – Co-authors of the Wakefield study begin removing their names from the article when they discover Wakefield had been paid by lawyers representing parents who planned to sue vaccine manufacturers.

May 14, 2004 – The Institute of Medicine releases a report “rejecting a causal relationship between the MMR vaccine and autism.”

February 2010 – The Lancet, the British medical journal that published Wakefield’s study, officially retracts the article. Britain also revokes Wakefield’s medical license.

2011 – Investigative reporter Brian Deer writes a series of articles in the BMJ exposing Wakefield’s fraud. The articles state that he used distorted data and falsified medical histories of children that may have led to an unfounded relationship between vaccines and the development of autism.

2011 – The US Public Health Service finds that 63% of parents who refuse and delay vaccines do so for fear their children could have serious side effects.

June 17, 2014 – After analyzing 10 studies, all of which looked at whether there was a link between vaccines and autism and involved a total of over one million children, the University of Sydney publishes a report saying there is no correlation between vaccinations and the development of autism.

February 2015 – Advocacy group Autism Speaks releases a statement, “Over the last two decades, extensive research has asked whether there is any link between childhood vaccinations and autism. The results of this research are clear: Vaccines do not cause autism. We urge that all children be fully vaccinated.

August 23, 2018 – A study published in the American Journal of Public Health finds that Twitter accounts run by automated bots and Russian trolls masqueraded as legitimate users engaging in online vaccine debates. The bots and trolls posted a variety of anti-, pro- and neutral tweets and directly confronted vaccine skeptics, which “legitimize” the vaccine debate, according to the researchers.

October 11, 2018 – Two reports published by the CDC find that vaccine exemption rates and the percentage of unvaccinated children are on the rise.

January 2019 – The World Health Organization names vaccine hesitancy as one of 10 threats to global health in 2019.

September 4, 2019 – Facebook announces that educational pop-up windows will appear on the social media platforms when a user searches for vaccine-related content, visits vaccine-related Facebook groups and pages, or taps a vaccine-related hashtag on Instagram

December 19, 2019 – The US Food and Drug administration announces the approval of a vaccine for the prevention of the Ebola virus for the first time in the United States. The vaccine, Ervebo, was developed by Merck and protects against Ebola virus disease caused by Zaire ebolavirus in people 18 and older.

December 27, 2019 – A study published in the medical journal JAMA Network Open finds that a single dose of the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine may be just as effective as two or three doses at preventing cancer-causing HPV infection.

February 3, 2020 – The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) announces that a clinical trial for an HIV vaccine has been discontinued since the vaccine was not found to prevent infections of human immunodeficiency virus, the virus that causes AIDS.

May 3, 2023 – The US FDA approves, Arexvy, the first vaccine to protect against respiratory syncytial virus or RSV. It is a single shot for adults 60 or older.

Source link

#Vaccines #Fast #Facts #CNN

Up to 20,000 people who attended a religious gathering may have been exposed to measles. What should they do next? | CNN

Post By Health , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,



CNN
 — 

Up to 20,000 people who attended a religious gathering at a college in Wilmore, Kentucky, in February could have been exposed to a person later diagnosed with measles.

On Friday, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued an alert to clinicians and public health officials about the confirmed case of measles in an individual present at the gathering who had not been vaccinated against the disease.

“If you attended the Asbury University gathering on February 17 or 18 and you are unvaccinated or not fully vaccinated against measles, you should quarantine for 21 days after your last exposure and monitor yourself for symptoms of measles so that you do not spread measles to others,” according to the CDC advisory.

The CDC also recommended that people who are unvaccinated receive the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine.

Reading this news, people may have questions about measles, including its symptoms, infection outcomes and who is most at risk. They may also want to know what makes measles so contagious, what has been the cause of recent outbreaks and how effective the MMR vaccine is.

To help answer these questions, I spoke with CNN Medical Analyst Dr. Leana Wen, an emergency physician and professor of health policy and management at the George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health. Previously, she served as Baltimore’s health commissioner, where her duties included overseeing the city’s immunization and infectious disease investigations.

CNN: What is measles, and what are the symptoms?

Dr. Leana Wen: Measles is an extremely contagious illness that’s caused by the measles virus. Despite many public health advances, including the development of the MMR vaccine, it remains a major cause of death among children globally.

The measles virus is transmitted via droplets from the nose, mouth or throat of infected individuals. If someone is infected and coughs or sneezes, droplets can land on you and infect you. These droplets can land on surfaces, and if you touch the surface and then touch your nose or mouth, that could infect you, too.

Symptoms usually appear 10 to 12 days after infection. They include a high fever, runny nose, conjunctivitis (pink eye) and small, painless white spots on the inside of the mouth. A few days after these symptoms begin, many individuals develop a characteristic rash — flat red spots that generally start on the face and then spread downward over the neck, trunk, arms, legs and feet. The spots can become joined together as they spread and can be accompanied by a high fever.

A nurse gives a woman a measles, mumps and rubella virus vaccin at the Utah County Health Department on April 29, 2019 in Provo, Utah.

CNN: What are outcomes of measles infections? Who is most at risk?

Wen: Many individuals recover without incident. Others, however, can develop severe complications.

One in five unvaccinated people with measles are hospitalized, according to the CDC. As many as 1 out of every 20 children with measles will get pneumonia; about 1 in 1,000 who get measles can develop encephalitis, a swelling of the brain that can lead to seizures and leave the child with lasting disabilities. And nearly 1 to 3 out of every 1,000 children who are infected with measles will die.

Measles is not only a concern for children. It can also cause premature births in pregnant women who contract it. Immunocompromised people, such as cancer patients and those infected with HIV, are also at increased risk.

CNN: What makes measles so contagious?

Wen: Measles is one of the most contagious diseases in the world — up to 90% of the unvaccinated people who come into contact with a contagious individual will also become infected. The measles virus can remain in the air for up to two hours after an infected person leaves an area.

Another reason why measles spreads so easily is its long incubation period. In infected people, the time from exposure to fever is an average of about 10 days, and from exposure to rash onset is about 14 days — but could be up to 21 days. In addition, infected people are contagious from four days before rash starts through four days after. That’s a long period of time where they could unknowingly infect others.

CNN: What has been the cause of recent measles outbreaks?

Wen: It’s important to note that this incident in Kentucky is not yet considered an outbreak. Only one person has been diagnosed with measles. That person was possibly exposed to many others given the number of people in attendance at this gathering, but we don’t know yet if any of those people were infected.

But let’s look at a recent example of a confirmed outbreak in the US: In November 2022, health officials in central Ohio raised alarm over young children being diagnosed with measles. In all, 85 children got sick. None of the children died, but 36 needed to be hospitalized. All those infected were either unvaccinated or not yet fully vaccinated.

Health officials were able to contain the outbreak through contact tracing, vaccination and other public health measures in early February, and it was declared over. But there is concern it won’t be the last of its kind. A study from the CDC reported the rate of immunizations for required vaccines among kindergarten students nationwide dropped from 95% in the 2019-20 school year to 93% in the 2021-22 school year. Some communities have far lower rates than this national average, however, which can lead to outbreaks — not only of measles but also diseases like polio that can also have severe consequences.

CNN: How effective is the MMR vaccine?

Wen: The MMR vaccine is a two-dose vaccine. The recommendation is for children to receive the first dose at age 12-15 months and the second dose at age 4-6 years. One dose of the MMR vaccine 93% effective at preventing measles infection. Two doses are 97% effective.

CNN: What is the best way to protect against measles?

Wen: The MMR vaccine is an extremely safe and very effective vaccine and is recognized as a significant public health advance for preventing an otherwise extremely contagious disease from spreading and causing potentially very severe — even fatal — outcomes.

Consider that the vaccine was licensed in the US in 1963. In the four years before that, there were an average of more than 500,000 cases of measles every year and over 430 measles-associated deaths. By 1998, there were just 89 cases and no measles-associated deaths. That’s a huge public health triumph.

Young children should receive the vaccine according to the recommended schedule. Older kids and adults who never received it should also discuss getting it with their health care provider. And clinicians and public health officials in the US and around the world should redouble efforts to increase routine childhood immunizations so as to stop preventable diseases from making a comeback.

Source link

#people #attended #religious #gathering #exposed #measles #CNN

Decreasing rates of childhood immunization are a major concern. Our medical analyst explains why | CNN

Post By Health , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,



CNN
 — 

Vaccine rates for measles, polio, diphtheria and other diseases are decreasing among US children, according to a new study from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The rate of immunizations for required vaccines among kindergarten students declined from 95% to approximately 94% during the 2020-21 school year. It dropped further — to 93% — in the 2021-22 school year.

That’s still a high number, so why is this drop in immunization significant? What accounts for the decline? What might be the consequences if these numbers drop further? If parents are unsure about vaccinating their kids, what should they do? And what can be done on a policy level to increase immunization numbers?

To help us with these questions, I spoke with CNN Medical Analyst Dr. Leana Wen, an emergency physician, public health expert and professor of health policy and management at the George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health. She is also author of “Lifelines: A Doctor’s Journey in the Fight for Public Health.”

CNN: Why is it a problem that childhood immunization rates are declining?

Dr. Leana Wen: The reduction of vaccine-preventable diseases is one of the greatest public health success stories in the last 100 years.

The polio vaccine was introduced in the United States in 1955, for example. In the four years prior, there were an average of over 16,000 cases of paralytic polio and nearly 2,000 deaths from polio each year across the US. Widespread use of the polio vaccine had led to the eradication of polio in the country by 1979, according to the CDC, sparing thousands of deaths and lifelong disability among children each year.

The measles vaccine was licensed in the US in 1963. In the four years before that, there were an average of over 500,000 cases and over 430 measles-associated deaths each year. By 1998, there were just 89 cases recorded — and no measles-associated deaths.

These vaccines are very safe and extremely effective. The polio vaccine, for example, is over 99% effective at preventing paralytic polio. The measles vaccine is 97% effective at preventing infection.

We can do this same analysis for other diseases for which there are routine childhood immunizations.

It’s very concerning that rates of immunization are declining for vaccines that have long been used to prevent disease and reduce death. That means more children are at risk for severe illness — illness that could be averted if they were immunized. Moreover, if the proportion of unvaccinated individuals increases in a community, this also puts others at risk. That includes babies too young to be vaccinated or people for whom the vaccines don’t protect as well — for example, patients on chemotherapy for cancer.

CNN: What accounts for the decline in vaccination numbers?

Wen: There are probably many factors. First, there has been substantial disruption to the US health care system during the Covid-19 pandemic. Many children missed routine visits to the pediatrician during which they would have received vaccines due to pandemic restrictions. In addition, some community health services offered also became disrupted as local health departments focused on Covid-19 services.

Second, disruption to schooling has also played a role. Vaccination requirements are often checked prior to the start of the school year. When schools stopped in-person instruction, that led to some families falling behind on their immunizations.

Third, misinformation and disinformation around Covid-19 vaccines may have seeded doubt in other vaccines. Vaccine hesitancy and misinformation were already major public health concerns before the coronavirus emerged, but the pandemic has exacerbated the issues.

According to a December survey published by the Kaiser Family Foundation, more than one in three American parents said vaccinating children against measles, mumps, and rubella shouldn’t be a requirement for them to attend public schools, even if that may create health risks for others. This was a substantial increase from 2019, when a similar poll from the Pew Research Center found only 23% of parents opposed school vaccine requirements.

CNN: What are some consequences if immunization rates drop further?

Wen: If immunization rates drop further, we could see more widespread outbreaks. Diseases that were virtually eliminated in the US could reemerge, and more people can become severely ill and suffer lasting consequences or even die.

We are already seeing some consequences: Last summer, there was a confirmed case of paralytic polio in an unvaccinated adult in New York. It’s devastating that a disease like polio has been identified again in the US, since we have an extremely effective vaccine to prevent it.

There is an active measles outbreak in Ohio. As of January 17, 85 cases have been reported. Most of the cases involved unvaccinated children, and at least 34 have been hospitalized.

CNN: If parents are unsure of vaccinating their kids, what should they do?

Wen: As parents, we generally trust pediatricians with our children’s health. We consult pediatricians if our kids are diagnosed with asthma and diabetes, or if they have new worrisome symptoms of another illness. We should also consult our pediatricians about childhood immunizations; parents and caregivers with specific questions or concerns should address them.

The national association of pediatricians, the American Academy of Pediatrics, “strongly recommends on-time routine immunization of all children and adolescents according to the Recommended Immunization Schedules for Children and Adolescents.”

CNN: What can be done to increase immunization numbers?

Wen: There needs to be a concerted educational campaign to address why vaccination against measles, mumps, rubella, chickenpox, polio and so forth is so crucial. One of the reasons for vaccine hesitancy, in my experience, is that these diseases have been rarely seen in recent years. Many people who are parents now didn’t experience the devastation of these diseases growing up, so may not realize how terrible it would be for them to return.

Specific interventions should be targeted at the community level. In some places, low immunization levels may be due to access. Vaccination drives at schools, parks, shopping centers, and other places where families gather can help increase numbers. In other places, the low uptake may be because of vaccine hesitancy and misinformation. There will need to be different strategies implemented in that situation.

Overall, increasing immunization rates for vaccine-preventable childhood diseases needs to be a national imperative. I can’t underscore how tragic it would be for kids to suffer the harms of diseases that could be entirely prevented with safe, effective and readily available vaccines that have been routinely given for decades.

Source link

#Decreasing #rates #childhood #immunization #major #concern #medical #analyst #explains #CNN