Get Measles Vaccine Now, Warns Massachusetts Health Chief

BOSTON — Bay Staters who aren't vaccinated against measles should do so "now," the state's health commissioner warned this week. Nationwide, there have been more than 700 measles cases and counting this year. Massachusetts has seen only one case so far in 2019 — an individual from Greater Boston who contracted the infection in March.

"I urge all Massachusetts residents to take this health outbreak seriously," state Public Health Commissioner Monica Bharel said in a statement this week. "Massachusetts residents travel to places where measles is occurring and every day visitors arrive here from places where measles is occurring ... Make sure you have evidence of immunity to measles. If you don’t, you should get vaccinated."

Bharel said more than 60 suspected measles cases have been investigated in the Bay State this year, triple the number from the same time in 2018.

After the individual from Greater Boston contracted measles, he/she visited local restaurants and a grocery store, leading officials to issue a public alert warning against possible exposure. Measles is highly contagious but the individual didn't spread it to anyone else.

Measles symptoms happen about two weeks after exposure and include fever, red eyes and a rash that usually starts on the head and moves down the body.

The return of measles has been blamed on the anti-vaccine movement.

"There's a lot of misinformation from this anti-vaccine movement within the community," Dr. Joseph Kaplovitz, a pediatrician who serves the ultra-Orthodox community in Brooklyn's Williamsburg neighborhood, recently told The Associated Press. "Some of the misinformation is that it causes autism, that the vaccines contain mercury, that the disease itself will protect them from cancer, eczema."

Measles was eliminated in the U.S. in 2000.