OCEANSIDE, NY — An unvaccinated child was hospitalized with the first case this year of measles to hit Long Island, the Nassau County Department of Health said, putting other unvaccinated individuals at risk.
The overwhelming majority of New Yorkers got vaccinated before enrolling in elementary school.
“There is, unfortunately, lower vaccination numbers than are ideal,” Dr. Aaron Glatt, director of infectious diseases at Mount Sinai South Nassau, told Patch.
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When vaccination rates slip below 95 percent, Glatt said, concern rises for significant spreading. As of January 1, the first dose of the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine was at only 81 percent for children up to two years of age, the New York State Department of Health Department said.
Having one dose of the MMR vaccine is 93 percent effective against measles and 97 percent effective after a second dose, given between ages four and six, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
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“This is a safe and very good vaccine. There’s no reason not to get it,” Glatt said. “Measles is a killer.”
Another group of people who do not have to worry about a potential outbreak is anyone born before 1957.
“People in their sixties and seventies may have had natural measles,” Glatt said. “They are probably considered immune. It’s highly contagious. So most people who lived at that point in time— had measles.”
When the child contracted measles in the emergency department of the Cohen Children’s Medical Center last week, a hospital spokesperson said other patients were determined to be “high risk.”
“It means they are exposed and they never had the illness,” Glatt said.
There was an outbreak in 2019 across the country with more than 1,200 measles cases, the most since 1992, the CDC said.
New York City saw more than 400 people get ill from the disease in 2019.
Still, measles remains rare in the U.S., despite the numbers on the upswing in the first quarter of 2024. There have been 64 cases, already eclipsing last year’s total.
Vaccination is the tool at doctors’ disposal.
“There is no medicine to take,” Glatt said. “There is no effective therapy for it. Another good reason not to get it.”
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