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According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, individual measles cases in the United States this year number more than 1,200—the highest they’ve been since 1992. Most of these instances have been in people who were unvaccinated, an increasingly common scenario in the US, particularly in Texas where vaccine exemptions in children have increased by a factor of 28 since 2003. In a study published today (August 20) in JAMA Network Open, researchers predict that vaccination levels in some parts of Texas are already low enough to allow for measles outbreaks involving hundreds of people, and the outbreaks could be even worse if parents continue to opt out of vaccines for their kids.
“It’s a fundamental challenge trying to pick what might happen in the future,” says Penn State’s Matthew Ferrari, who studies measles outbreaks in low- and middle-income countries and did not participate in the ...
