An anti-vaccination 'hotspot' near Portland declares an emergency over measles outbreak.
A quickly escalating measles outbreak around Portland, Oregon, has led health officials in
nearby Clark County, Washington, to declare a public emergency.
At the beginning of last week, there were only a handful of confirmed cases. On Friday, the day
the emergency was declared, there were 19. The latest update came Tuesday, when county officials
said they had confirmed 23 cases and were investigating two more suspected cases. The vast majority
of those who have fallen ill had not been immunized.
The outbreak makes concrete the fears of pediatric epidemiologists that a citadel of the
movement against compulsory vaccination could be susceptible to the rapid spread of a potentially
deadly disease.
State data shows that 7.9 percent of children in Clark County were exempted in 2017-18 school
year from vaccines required for kindergarten entry, which includes the two-dose course for measles
that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says is 97 percent effective. Nationally, about
2 percent of children went without required immunization for nonmedical reasons.
Because measles is among the most highly contagious of all infectious diseases, it is bound to
spring up in areas with low vaccination rates, according Peter J.Hotez, a professor of pediatrics
and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Huston.
"This is something I've predicted for a while now," he said of the public health emergency in
Clark County. "It is really awful and really tragic and totally preventable."