At least 254 people were in quarantine for measles as of Tuesday, with 16 of them in isolation, according to state public health officials. They say they worry the Upstate outbreak is accelerating.
Of the 111 measles cases recorded in the Upstate, 105 have involved unvaccinated people, they said. The outbreak, centered in Spartanburg County, has 27 new infections, officials said. Many of the new cases were associated with an Inman church.
A Clemson public health professor said it was pretty clear an outbreak was coming with the area’s vaccination rate falling below 90%.
“It’s just basic biology,” Kathleen Cartmell told The Post and Courier. “Measles is one of the most contagious diseases that exist.”
State Epidemiologist Linda Bell said at a Wednesday press conference that the state was at risk of losing the designation of eliminating measles — which was declared nationally in 2000 – because of its ongoing transmission.
“And so now that we are … at the brink of seeing continued transmission in the United States for almost a year now, we’ve run the risk of losing that designation as a country,” she said in published reports. “What we’d like people to see is that picture: to consider the effectiveness of the vaccine and having this disease essentially go away.
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