A second case of measles has been confirmed at a migrant shelter in Chicago, marking the first cases in the state in the past five years and highlighting the public health danger posed by overcrowded migrant housing.
The Chicago Department of Public Health confirmed the second case on Sunday and said the patient is hospitalized but stable.
As millions of migrants have come to America under President Joe Biden’s immigration policies, experts have warned that overcrowded shelters and low vaccination rates in other countries could leave the US vulnerable to disease outbreaks.
They say asylum seekers could bring contagious diseases across the southern border and that the “open border” policy is leading to drug-resistant diseases.
And city leaders have said migrants are coming to their areas in “disturbing” and “very unhealthy” conditions.
Migrants themselves have said that diseases are a major problem in shelters due to overcrowding and unsanitary conditions.
The latest outbreak in Chicago adds to a growing list across the country, which has seen clusters of tuberculosis, chickenpox and an unidentified disease that killed a 5-year-old boy in December.
Dozens of migrant families arrive from Texas at the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York in September 2023
A bus carrying migrants from Texas arrives at the Port Authority bus station in New York, United States on May 3, 2023
Texas has brought more than 105,000 migrants to sanctuary cities since 2022, according to the governor’s office
In April 2023, New York Health Commissioner Ashwin Vasan urged officials and doctors to take extra caution when treating or screening migrants to avoid a public health crisis — noting that many lack routine vaccinations.
In fact, he said that 50 percent of migrants going to New York City did not have a polio vaccine.
Dr. Marc Siegel, medical director of New York University, wrote for USA Today: ‘Migrants could bring contagious diseases across our southern border. When they are bussed to New York and elsewhere, these diseases come with them.”
And Dr. James Hodges, an internist practicing along the Texas border, told the publication that the “open border” is leading to more drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) in the United States.
The CDC requires all immigrants and refugees to undergo medical screening before entering the U.S., including a brief physical examination, a mental health evaluation, review of vaccination records, testing for STDs, and a screening for tuberculosis.
Immigration applicants with communicable diseases are not admitted to the U.S., but not all go through the proper channels, meaning sick migrants can slip through the cracks and bring illness with them.
Over the past 18 months, Chicago has hosted more than 36,600 migrants — the majority from Venezuela, which has recently suffered measles outbreaks and has low vaccination rates.
And Chicago’s migrant housing center has been involved in several previous outbreaks, including one that killed a 5-year-old child.
In December 2023, the boy was living in a shelter that was intended to house 1,000 people but was holding about 2,400 at the time.
Witnesses at the shelter said the boy had a temperature of more than 100 degrees Fahrenheit and was convulsing and bleeding from the mouth and nose. Officials said he later died at the hospital, but witnesses report he died at the shelter.
The same week, six other residents were hospitalized with unspecified illnesses.
Residents of the shelter told the Chicago Sun Times states that diseases are spreading in homes due to overcrowding and unsanitary conditions.
Dr. Thomas Moore, an infectious disease expert, told DailyMail.com: ‘If you want to cause a public health crisis, put people in crowded spaces.’
He told this website that overcrowding, unsanitary conditions and limited access to vaccines in migrants’ countries of birth can all cause and worsen outbreaks in shelters.
The Associated Press reportedciting people living in the overcrowded facility that there was inadequate heating, water leaks, expired food and overcrowded conditions.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson at the time blamed border cities for the outbreaks, saying migrants were arriving in Chicago under conditions that are “quite troubling.”
He told reporters: “People are showing up under very extreme circumstances. Very unhealthy.
‘They just drop people off everywhere. Do you understand how ragged and how bad that is?’
New York City, where more than 157,600 migrants have arrived since spring 2022, was experiencing a tuberculosis outbreak that some health care experts blamed in part on the influx.
In Dr. Vasan’s 2023 letter: he specifically mentioned tuberculosis as a disease of concern.
Last autumn, the five boroughs recorded a “dramatic” rise in cases of tuberculosis, once one of the world’s deadliest infections – and a death sentence for half of those infected.
However, with the arrival of vaccines, which are up to 80 percent effective in preventing serious diseases, the death rate in developed countries has fallen to below four percent.
In 2023, the city had more than 500 cases of tuberculosis – an increase of 20 percent compared to 2022.
While some health officials said the increase was due to the Covid pandemic hampering the diagnosis and treatment of tuberculosis, others speculated that the increase could be due to the wave of migrants, who are at increased risk of infection because the disease can spread easily in the types of overcrowded, communal environments in which they are housed.
Dr. Vasan wrote, “Many people who have recently arrived in New York have lived in or traveled through countries with high rates of tuberculosis.”
In Denver, several cases of chickenpox were reported in November among children in the city’s migrant shelters. City health officials said they were treating the children and beginning to vaccinate people in the migrant population.
In his letter, Dr. Vasan added that vaccinating migrants, as well as screening for diseases, should be a top priority.
Dr. Moore said screening migrants would help reduce disease, but acknowledged that limited resources could make that unrealistic. He also said vaccination campaigns can help prevent outbreaks of certain diseases.