NYT-Ashley Gilbertson
A rare outbreak of measles in New York City may have been spread by the failure of medical workers to recognize the disease quickly enough and to quarantine patients so they would not infect others, a city epidemiologist said this week.
Dr. Jay Varma, the health department’s deputy commissioner for disease control, said the department’s investigators were looking at whether some of the 20 confirmed cases, which are concentrated in northern Manhattan, might have resulted from exposure in medical facilities. Measles is one of the most contagious diseases and can be spread through airborne respiratory droplets even two hours after an infected person has left the room.
“We know a number of people were exposed and possibly got their infection either at a doctor’s office or at an emergency room where they went and it took more time than it should have for them to be put in an isolation area where they couldn’t possibly infect anyone else,” Dr. Varma said.
The first known case of the disease was detected in early February.
Dr. Varma declined to identify any medical facilities, saying that such exposure in a hospital was not unusual and that “we are not trying to shame any one institution.” But he said this route of exposure could make it harder to contain and to track the outbreak, because it was not concentrated in any one social or cultural circle, as contagious diseases often are.
A health department spokeswoman said that no cases had been traced to a hospital, but on March 12, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center sent an email to its staff saying several pediatric and adult patients with measles had sought treatment there, “resulting in nearly 600 patients being potentially exposed to measles.” The email went on to say, “Many of our clinical staff have never seen a case of measles.”
It attached graphic photographs of children with bright red measles rashes covering their bodies and detailed instructions about how to diagnose measles. The attachment said that any patients suspected of having measles should immediately be given a mask and taken with family members to an isolation room.
It said security guards had been posted at doors to look for patients with symptoms of measles and to direct them to put on masks.
Dr. Yoko Furuya, medical director of infection prevention and control at NewYork-Presbyterian, said on Monday that the hospital system had treated 10 measles cases. She said some patients might have been exposed to others for a few minutes.
Myrna Manners, a spokeswoman for NewYork-Presbyterian, said that “to the best of our knowledge, none of the patients who were seen in our emergency room got measles here in our emergency room.” She said that the hospital was reaching out to all 600 people potentially exposed “out of an abundance of caution.”
In early March, Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx hospitalized a 15-month-old child with measles, who had missed being vaccinated because of illness, said Dr. Nathan Litman, its chief of pediatric infectious diseases. Dr. Litman said the child, who has recovered, was exposed in Washington Heights.
The first symptom of measles is fever, followed by a cough; runny nose; red, watery eyes; and a rash. People can be contagious before the rash appears, and are advised to stay away from other people for 21 days after being exposed. Measles can lead to ear infection, diarrhea, pneumonia, miscarriage, brain inflammation and even death.
Since the outbreak was detected, nine children and 11 adults have been infected: 16 Manhattan residents, three Bronx residents and one Brooklyn resident.
Dr. Varma said the first two cases were in adults who had traveled outside New York and who did not know each other but were probably infected at the same airport in the United States. He declined to identify the airport. Both had activities that brought them to northern Manhattan and that included health care facilities, he said, declining to provide more details.
Only three of the 11 had records proving they had been vaccinated, though others believed they had been. In rare instances, a vaccinated person can become infected later in life.
Of the nine children, seven were too young to be vaccinated or within the window of 12 to 15 months old when the vaccination is recommended. The other two were from families in which the parents refused to allow the vaccination.
Because of federally financed childhood vaccination programs, measles has been considered effectively eliminated in the United States since 2000. However, there are periodic outbreaks, usually among unvaccinated people who have traveled to foreign countries, where measles is still common. Some parents refuse to have their children vaccinated for religious reasons and others because of a belief that vaccines can cause autism, though no link has ever been proved.
On March 14, the Los Angeles County health department confirmed 10 measles cases in the county, eight of them linked to international travel.
Last year, there were 58 cases among Orthodox Jews in Borough Park and Williamsburg, Brooklyn, beginning with an intentionally unvaccinated 17-year-old who had returned from London.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/19/nyreg ... .html?_r=0
http://gothamist.com/2014/03/19/measles_outbreak.php
http://www.refinery29.com/2014/03/64428 ... s-outbreak
Well the trolls strike again and this is not the only report of measles outbreaks exploding throughout the United States from sea to shining sea. This is freaking ridiculous and frankly nonsense especially among those who believe in the so called theory of "vaccine induced autism". As for the religious especially Jews it makes me ashamed to be an observant Jew and hear things like that.
What say you NSG's unleavened and leavened masses?
