ATLANTA – Five Georgians have come down with cases of highly contagious measles this year, State Epidemiologist Dr. Cherie Drenzek said Tuesday.
That’s a slight drop from last year’s six measles cases and well below a peak of 18 cases Georgia experienced in 2019, Drenzek told members of the state Board of Public Health.
She said the first three cases occurred in January to members of a family who had traveled together within the United States. None of the three had been vaccinated against measles, she said.
A second case of measles involving two Georgians took place more recently – in May spilling into June – with members of the same household falling ill, Drenzek said. Both were unvaccinated, and one had traveled internationally, she said.
The Georgia cases pale in comparison to ongoing measles outbreaks in Colorado and in eastern Canada. In the province of Ontario, 40 unvaccinated pregnant women came down with measles, Drenzek said. The disease spread to the newborns of six of those women, and one child died, she said.
In Colorado, an out-of-state passenger connecting at the Denver airport after a flight from Istanbul spread measles to eight people, Drenzek said.
“This is unusual, but it highlights what we’ve been seeing in international travel by unvaccinated individuals,” she said.
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a recommendation last week advising that Americans traveling internationally be fully vaccinated against measles.
Measles was declared eliminated in the United States in 2020, meaning there was no spread within the country and new cases developed only after travel abroad.
But cases started climbing during the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath, as the nation’s Republican leaders began openly expressing doubts over the efficacy of vaccines. Just this week, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – a longtime vaccine skeptic – dismissed all members of the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee.
“I think we’re in for a period of skepticism that could result in lower immunization rates,” Board of Public Health Chairman Dr. James Curran said Tuesday. “It could lead to more freedom, but it will inevitably lead to more outbreaks.”
Meanwhile, Drenzek said the end of the respiratory virus season in Georgia has reduced cases of COVID, flu, and RSV to a minimum. However, she a new subvariant of COVID has begun spreading and likely will become the driver of a late- summer COVID wave.
“We have a lot more immunity to COVID now,” she said. “But we can still expect some of these seasonal patterns.”
Board Secretary Mychal Walker asked Drenzek how President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States from the World Health Organization (WHO) might affect public health in Georgia.
“I’m concerned that if we isolate ourselves, it will do more harm than good,” he said.
Drenzek said the state still has access to data generated by the WHO even though the U.S. is no longer participating in the international agency.