Unvaccinated Child in Hamilton Dies from Measles Infection; World Health Organization Reveals

 

It had been more than ten years since Canada's last measles death. The child who died in Hamilton had not been protected. 

The public health department in Hamilton revealed on Friday afternoon that the child, who was less than five years old, was from Hamilton, but they wouldn't say anything else.

"This is a very sad situation; a young child died too soon, when they still had their whole life ahead of them." "There have been six confirmed cases of measles in Hamilton so far this year, and none of the people who have had it have ever had a measles-containing vaccine," said Dr. Brendan Lew, Hamilton's assistant medical officer of health. "Out of respect for the child and their family's privacy, we will not be going into more specifics about this case."

The first thing that was said about the measles death was in a report that Public Health Ontario put out Thursday. The story did not say where the child was from, though.

As of May 15, there had been "22 confirmed cases of measles in Ontario."

The government says that 12 of the kids who got sick were not protected against the very dangerous and catchy virus. No one knows if the 14th child has been shot or not, according to the story.

There were five kids who were taken to the hospital, and one of them, a child from Hamilton, died. 

The report and Hamilton's public health department don't say how the child got the virus.

According to the study from Public Health Ontario, travel was the cause of 15 of the 22 cases this year. Six of the cases were in Hamilton residents who had not been vaccinated, according to Hamilton public health. Five more cases were caused by close touch with a sick person, and the last two cases are described as having a "unknown" cause.

Sheryl Bolotin, who runs the Centre for Vaccine Preventable Diseases at the University of Toronto's Dalla Lana School of Public Health, told the Toronto Star that she doesn't know when the last measles death in Canada happened.

She said that last case of measles happened in 1998. There is a chance that the last person to die in this country from measles was more than 25 years ago.

The Public Health Ontario study that came out on Thursday doesn't have any numbers from before 2013.

A pediatric infectious diseases doctor at the Hospital for Sick Children named Dr. Shaun Morris said that kids younger than five "are at greatest risk for infection and for severe outcomes."

He said that "a significant proportion" of kids who get measles will become sick with something else, like pneumonia, diarrhea, or other secondary bacterial illnesses. About 20% of people who get measles will need to go to the hospital.

Vaccination rates dropped a lot in the Western world during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccine and other regular school-age vaccination programs were put on hold while public health resources were redirected to fight COVID-19.

In December, WHO said that there were 30 times as many measles cases in Europe as there were in 2000. The number of people who got the MMR shot dropped below what was needed to stop the virus from spreading in places like Hamilton.

More than a third of school-aged children did not have up-to-date vaccination records in February. This led Hamilton's public health department to start a new campaign to get children shot in the area. They had until the first week of March to update those records, or their kids could be kicked out of school.

Computers in the City of Hamilton were hacked on February 25. The reason for this was that the public health department couldn't get to its collection of virus information. Public health did not know right away what was going on with the vaccine programme on Friday.

Lew wrote in an email, "We encourage all Hamiltonians to check their vaccination records to make sure they are up to date on all of their routine shots, including the MMR." They should talk to their doctor or nurse if they aren't sure.

Read More