South Carolina officials reported five additional cases of measles, and said that the quarantine of unvaccinated children is working to limit spread of the infectious disease.
The five new cases all appeared in people who were exposed at schools and have been quarantining at home, the South Carolina Department of Public Health said.
“The early quarantining as a result of their identified exposure is actually a successful public health outcome that shows how rapid containment efforts around known cases and quarantining those known to be exposed is highly effective in preventing community spread,” Dr. Linda Bell, South Carolina’s state epidemiologist, told reporters on a call on Oct. 15.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines outbreaks as three or more cases related to one another. The outbreak in South Carolina started earlier this year. Many outbreaks originate with a person who returned from overseas. The current outbreak involved cases with no history of travel, officials said earlier in October.
On Oct. 9, health officials said they had confirmed a new case in Greenville County, a separate county from other recent cases. “What this new case tells us is that there is active, unrecognized community transmission of measles occurring,” Bell said at the time.
Of the 16 cases now confirmed, 12 are directly linked to the outbreak in Spartanburg County, according to Bell. None of the 16 patients had received the measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccine, officials said.
The five new patients are known to have been in close contact with infected individuals in schools and started quarantining before they became infectious, officials said. It was not clear if all five patients were students.
Officials said previously that some 153 students had been told to quarantine for 21 days, the transmission period of measles, due to being unvaccinated and being exposed to measles at the two schools linked to measles cases in Spartanburg County.
That number was down to 139, officials said Wednesday.
The quarantine is a result of guidance from the state Department of Public Health and is voluntary, a spokesperson for the department told The Epoch Times via email.
The MMR vaccine is required for school attendance in South Carolina, although parents can obtain religious or medical exemptions for their children. Officials are encouraging people to receive the MMR vaccine if they have not. The CDC estimates one dose of the vaccine provides 93 percent protection against measles, and two doses confer 97 percent protection.
The vaccine can cause side effects, but Bell said the benefits outweigh the risks.
Increasing vaccine coverage and implementing quarantine are two ways to prevent further spread of measles, officials said. They are expecting confirmation of additional cases in the coming weeks, potentially from a gym in Greenville that has been identified as the source of a child’s exposure on Sept. 30.
The outbreak in South Carolina is one of 44 confirmed by officials this year, with 1,596 total cases in the United States since Jan. 1. That’s the highest number of cases in the United States since 1992.
Some of the outbreaks, including the largest one, which was in Texas, have ended, while others, including one in Minnesota, have cropped up.