Healthcare workers should treat hospitalized measles patients with Vitamin A, according to a new recommendation by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The recommendation was posted on the CDC healthcare provider website Feb. 20.
Also, a patient’s history of disease is no longer considered evidence of immunity, said Jane Seward, deputy director in the Division of Viral Diseases at the National Center for Immunizations and Respiratory Diseases, during a Feb. 19 webinar.
All providers should be prepared in advance for documentation, and having electronic health records saves time and money, she said. Patients seen in a clinic should be placed in an airborne isolation room.
Healthcare workers need to recognize the symptoms of measles as more than a rash, Seward said, as many have never seen a case.
[See also: Chicago measles cases add to growing national outbreak.]
Public health departments are the “boots on the ground,” she said. “It’s a huge amount of work for public health departments to do the work to trace every single person who has been in contact.”
Since Jan. 1, 141 measles cases in 17 states have been reported from two outbreaks. Most originated from a single case in Anaheim, Calif. on Dec. 28. Six cases were importations from other countries, according to Seward. Another nine are traced to an outbreak at a Chicago area daycare center, where eight babies and one adult were infected.
“That investigation is ongoing,” she said.
All of the recent measles cases are due to failure to immunize. Among those unvaccinated, 80 percent choose not to be; another 8 percent are too young to be vaccinated, Seward said.
“In recent years, since 2013, we’ve had a real jump in outbreaks,” she noted.
Prior to vaccines in the 1950s, there were an estimated three to four million cases in the U.S., with 500,000 of those documented, according to Seward. An estimated 48,000 people were hospitalized with measles and complications from the disease, including encephalitis, causing 450-500 deaths.
Measles is still prevalent around the world, including in Europe, but the U.S. is seeing its highest infection rate since 1994, mostly transmitted by people who travelled abroad who were not protected.