Matthew R. Francis February 20, 2020 Follow all of PopSci’s COVID-19 coverage here, including travel advice, pregnancy concerns, and the latest findings on the virus itself. Scientists, medical professionals, and governments around the world are working to understand how the new respiratory disease ravaging Hubei province spreads—and how bad it could be for the rest...
by Amy Norton When parents can no longer get “personal-belief” exemptions from childhood vaccinations, they may get around it by asking for religious exemptions for their kids, a new study finds. Researchers found that after Vermont banned personal-belief exemptions, the number of kindergartners with religious exemptions from vaccination suddenly shot up—from 0.5% to nearly 4%....
But many globe-trotting Americans may not realize the problem is worldwide. Therefore, making sure your measles vaccination is up to date is paramount before jetting off. In fact, U.S. outbreaks of measles “are usually started by foreign travelers importing the virus to the U.S.,” according to Dr. Len Horovitz. He’s a specialist in pulmonary illnesses at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. “This is...
by Carrie Macmillan, Yale University Measles is so contagious that one infected person can spread the respiratory virus to 90 percent of people in the same room—and it can live in the air for two hours. Often, an infected person doesn’t even know they have measles for several weeks. Early symptoms include a fever, cough, runny nose, and red...
On the darkest day of 2018, the winter solstice, we at the Center for Vaccine Research at the University of Pittsburgh tweeted, with despair, a report in the Guardian that measles cases in Europe reached the highest number in 20 years. A sign at a clinic in Vancouver, Washington on Jan. 25, 2019 asks unvaccinated...
Australia was declared free of measles in 2014. Yet this summer we’ve seen nine cases of measles in New South Wales, and others in Victoria, Western Australia, South Australia and Queensland. People may unknowingly bring measles back from other countries, including Europe. Credit: Matej Kastelic/Shutterstock High vaccination rates in Australia means the measles virus doesn’t...
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Wednesday that people in 21 states and the District of Columbia have contracted measles. So far, 107 people have been affected during this recent outbreak — and this number will likely exceed last year’s number of 118 cases, according to USA Today. All this talk about measles might have you...
