Texas, Georgia Masters Report burst with the drop in vaccination percentages – campus safety magazine

Officials in Western Texas and Atlanta warn of measles outbreaks among low vaccination communities.

South Plains Public Health Director Zack Holbrux said on Monday that his department was first notified in late January around two cases in Gaines County, which has one of the highest vaccine release rates in the state, AP reports. Fifteen cases have now been identified in the county, mainly in school -age children. Some cases seem to be related to private religious schools in the field.

“I would not say that everyone is connected, but our teams are looking for sites for exposure and the background of these cases,” Holbrux said.

Local health officials organized the vaccination clinic last week and offered screening services to residents.

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Texas law allows children to receive the release of school vaccines for “Causes of Conscience”, including religious beliefs. According to data from the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS), the percentage of children in Texas with exceptions increased from 0.76% in 2014 to 2.32% in 2024.

In Gaines County, nearly 14% of kindergarten students up to 12th grade had release during the school year 2023-2024-more than five times greater than the average for the state and more than four times greater than the country average 3.3 % DSHS spokesman Lara Anton said the number of unvaccinated children is probably significantly more large, as Gaines County has many children who are at home and whose data are not reported.

“Due to the highly contagious nature of this disease, additional cases are likely to occur in Gaines County and surrounding communities,” DSHS warns in a statement.

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Georgia’s Health Department reports 2 more cases of measles

Last week, the Georgia Ministry of Public Health reported two additional measles cases in the metro-attack area. At the end of January, the department announced a person who tests positively for measles, sought medical treatment in three places before quarantlation. As a result of these visits, the epidemiologists have identified over 300 people who have been exposed to the infectious person, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Cisha Francis-Kristian, the head of the Gwinnett County Epidemiology Program, said residents in over 20 counties were affected by the disease investigation, including at least 114 in the Guinet County. The two new cases are unvaccinated members of the family of that person.

CDC data show that in the 2019-2020 academic year, 93.1% of kindergartens in Georgia received the measles vaccine. Last school year, this issue dropped to 88.4%.

The degree of vaccination against measles in the US

In a monthly Masters update, published on February 7, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said it has received reports of at least 14 cases of five jurisdictions this year: Georgia, Texas, Alaska, New York and Rod Island. All patients were unvaccinated or had an unknown vaccination status and six were hospitalized for isolation or treatment of complications.

Last year, the United States had 284 cases of measles – the largest number in five years. This number comes as the degree of kindergarten vaccination against measles, mumps and rubella has dropped below 95% threshold, which CDC says is needed to prevent outbreaks of the community.

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Prior to developing measles vaccine in the 1960s, the disease killed hundreds of children every year in the United States in 2023, measles killed over 107,000 worldwide. The victims were mostly unvaccinated or insufficient children under the age of five. Although in the United States it has not been reported the death of measles since 2015, Adam Ratner, a pediatrician in infectious diseases based in New York, told the NPR that it is not vaccinated against measles is a slippery slope.

“This is the most infectious disease we have known so far -much more infectious than the flu, much more infectious than Covid or polio or Ebola or anything else I can think of,” he said. “When the vaccination levels begin to fall, we first see measles outburst and then they are often followed by outbreaks of other diseases that prevented the vaccine, things that are a little less infectious than measles.”