United States: North Dakota joins 10 other states in the country that are now forced to confront the measles outbreak, the Associated Press reports, making it the latest state to do so.
Nine cases of all nine cases were reported in Williams County, in the Western part of North Dakota, by the North Dakota Department of Health and Human Services.
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Three of the confirmed cases relate to the first case of an unvaccinated child who potentially may have acquired the virus through an out-of-state visitor.
Five cases occurred in unvaccinated persons who did not have contact with the other cases, which raised concern about community transmission.
To date, this year, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has reported 935 cases of measles in the United States.
That is triple the number of cases in all of 2024. The majority of cases were reported from children (30 percent under age 5 and 38 percent age 5 to 19).
North Dakota is the 11th state in the U.S. with a measles outbreak. Two unvaccinated children died from measles-related illnesses in the epicenter in West Texas, and an adult in New Mexico who was not vaccinated died of a measles-related illness. https://t.co/jA6EjATPMe
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There have been 121 hospitalizations and three confirmed deaths. Ninety-six percent of the infections were in either unvaccinated or unvaccinated status unknown individuals, US News reported.
Two percent were one-dose measles-mumps-rubella vaccine recipients, and 2 percent were two-dose measles-mumps-rubella vaccine recipients.
The outbreaks in Texas for the three months explain most of the measles cases; 702 as of Tuesday.
Kansas reports an aggregate of 48 cases; New Mexico reports 67. Other states with active outbreaks – defined as three or more related cases – are Indiana, Michigan, Montana, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee.
Other states that have reported measles include Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington.