There have been no new reported cases of measles since the region’s first case was reported earlier this week.
We’re not out of the woods yet, though, according to the region’s medical officer of health, Dr. Nicola Mercer.
“Measles is making a return,” she said during Wednesday’s Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Public Health board meeting.
Measles is a virus that has been around forever, she said, and was very common prior to the 1970s.
The vaccine was developed in 1963, but wasn’t widely used until the late 1960s. The measles vaccine we use today, which includes mumps and rubella, wasn’t introduced until the 1970s.
People were vaccinated, and over the course of 50 years, Mercer said, measles became uncommon and its severity largely forgotten.
The odd time a case would appear, it would be from someone who travelled outside of Canada.
“But that has changed with vaccination rates declining,” she said. “We are now in a situation where some communities can see measles transmission within Ontario … from person to person.”
Locally, the low vaccination rate is especially a problem in private schools, she said.
Children under 12 months are typically not vaccinated for measles, putting them at higher risk.
“This means we have a lot of newborns and infants who are susceptible to measles, even if their parents are planning to vaccinate them,” she said.
Highly contagious, it spreads through the air and could be contracted in any public setting like a grocery store or community event. Symptoms include fever, runny nose, a cough, red and watery eyes, tiny white spots inside the mouth and a red blotchy rash.
The complications for infants are serious.
“We know a sizable portion of them do end up hospitalized, not specifically from measles, but from the complications,” she said.
Those complications can range from pneumonia to meningitis or hearing loss.
“We’ve forgotten what that looks like,” she said. “People knew that measles was really bad, and they were really grateful back in the 70s when their children didn’t have to get measles.”
“But unfortunately now we’re in a scenario where we do have a lot of people who are exercising their choice not to be vaccinated, but it does result in these outbreaks.”
So far there has been one case of measles locally and another case where someone with measles came from the county for an event in Guelph.
As of Wednesday, she said no secondary cases have developed as a result of the exposure, but public health is closely monitoring both cases.
That doesn’t mean more cases won’t develop, though.
“I don’t think we’ve seen the top of the curve yet,” she said. “We’re still seeing ongoing transmission.”
“Measles is one of the most contagious viruses that we have, and will not stop until (it) can’t find a susceptible host,” she said.
“If everybody in the community is vaccinated, then the virus can’t go anywhere, and that’s when the outbreak will end,” she said.
She added it’s often challenging to determine who has been exposed, because patients don’t always want to cooperate by sharing where they’ve been or who they’ve been in contact with.
“It makes it very difficult for us to warn people to stay at home to stop the spread,” she said.