Officials are disappointed another case of measles has surfaced in Minnesota after going three weeks without a new one. State Health Department’s Kris Ehresmann says measles seeks out unvaccinated individuals and “this latest case is an unvaccinated adult and had shared kind of some exposure settings and possibly airspace with our last case.” Ehresmann says there’s “definitely a potential for ongoing transmission of measles.” Forty-two days — two measles “incubation cycles” — must elapse with no new cases for officials to declare that this year’s outbreak is over. Seventy-nine cases have been reported in Minnesota so far, the most since 1990.
Ehresmann says, “Last year in the United States, there were only 70 cases for the entire country. So to have 79 cases in one state certainly is a significant outbreak of measles in this post-vaccination era.” In 1990 there were 462 measles cases in Minnesota resulting in three deaths.
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