MEASLES OUTBREAK CONTINUES TO SPREAD
Nearly 100 people may have been infected with the virus, Fraser Health says.
The Fraser Valley measles outbreak has spread beyond the Chilliwack school where it first appeared and into the general population in both that city and Agassiz, the Fraser Health Authority said Thursday.
A nine- year- old child has been admitted to hospital so far, said Dr. Paul Van Buynder, Chief Medical Health Officer at Fraser Health, and nearly 100 more people are suspected to have contracted the virus.
The health authority will set up special vaccination clinics in Chilliwack and Agassiz early next week and distribute more measles vaccine to doctors and pharmacies in the Fraser East region, which includes Abbotsford, Mission, Chilliwack, Agassiz, Harrison Hot Springs and Hope.
Children under five are most at risk of serious disease from measles and should obtain the vaccine from a family doctor or public health clinic, Fraser Health advised in a news release. Older children and adults should get the vaccine through a family doctor or pharmacy.
Measles is a potentially fatal viral infection characterized by a rash, high fever, runny nose, coughing and tiny spots inside the mouth. It is the most infectious of all diseases and transmitted through airborne spread, said Monika Naus, a medical director at the BC Centre for Disease Control.
“You don’t even have to have somebody sneeze in your face in an elevator, which is how we worry about things being transmitted,” she said, adding the disease can linger for hours, suspended in the air inside a closed space.
“There are a few case reports in the literature of children having left the waiting room in a doctor’s office and other people coming into that waiting room after the measles case has left and becoming infected,” she said.
Naus said the incubation period for measles is typically two weeks. A person can be sick with it within about a week of being exposed, and can be infectious to others for at least a few days before breaking out in a rash.
The disease can cause pneumonia, brain damage, deafness, serious complications among pregnant women and death. It is easily preventable through vaccination.
“It is not necessary to attend a medical centre for testing to confirm measles during an outbreak unless you are quite sick,” Van Buynder said, adding that anyone with measles symptoms should stay home.
“We know there is measles circulating and laboratory confirmation is not necessary. However, if you are seriously ill, please see a doctor after warning them you are coming.”
Fraser Health will announce times and locations of the special vaccination clinics on its website in the coming days.
Confirmed cases of measles ranged from zero to four cases per year from 2002 to 2009, before an outbreak infected 82 people after the 2010 Winter Olympic Games. Officials pointed to low vaccination rates as a contributor to that spread, and Naus said most people hit during that outbreak could not recall having been exposed to anyone who had been infected with measles before they got sick.