Two more children in South Florida have been diagnosed with measles as the outbreak continues to grow in the state.
The Florida Department of Health announced Sunday that two children had been infected with the disease in Broward County, which includes Fort Lauderdale and is just north of Miami.
Officials said one child was between the ages of five and nine, and the other was under the age of five. It is unclear whether they have been vaccinated.
This brings the total number of cases in the province to eight – six of whom were students at Manatee Bay Elementary School in Weston.
It is unclear whether the two latest cases are linked to the school.
The rise in measles cases comes as Florida’s surgeon general, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, is accused of fueling the spread of the virus by defying Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines.
The vaccination rate of children entering kindergarten in Broward County compared to the rest of Florida, where measles is on the rise
Florida’s Surgeon General, Dr. Joseph Ladapo (pictured) told parents they could decide whether to quarantine their children or allow them to continue attending school. This plan has come under increased supervision
Dr. Ladapo instead wrote in a letter to parents last week that he could leave the choice of whether to keep children at home up to parents, which drew criticism from doctors for putting vulnerable children at risk.
Dr Ladapo’s letter to parents acknowledged that the ‘normal’ recommendation is for unvaccinated children to stay home for 21 days.
However, it said, “DOH leaves the decision-making regarding school attendance to parents or guardians.”
Ben Hoffman, president of the AAP, responded to Dr. Ladapo’s advice to parents about measles: “It goes against everything I’ve ever heard and everything I’ve read.
‘It goes against our policy. It goes against what the CDC would recommend.”
Broward County Superintendent Peter Licata told Local News 10 last week that Manatee Bay Elementary School, where six of the eight sick children attend, has a 92 percent vaccination rate.
“Currently, out of 1,067 Manatee Bay students, there are 33 who do not have the MMR vaccine for various reasons,” he said.
According to the CDC, Florida’s MMR vaccination rate is approximately 91 percent, which is lower than the national rate of 93 percent.
Florida currently has the largest outbreak in the US – and in 2024 alone there have been 35 cases of measles in fifteen states.
On Friday, Michigan recorded its first case of measles since 2019. Additionally, Pennsylvania confirmed nine infections in January, eight of which were in Philadelphia.
Last year there were a total of 58 cases across the country.
Measles is a viral infection that mainly affects infants and young children.
Symptoms typically appear about 10 to 14 days after initial exposure and include fever, dry cough, runny nose, sore throat, inflamed eyes and large, blotchy skin.
The CDC states that one in five children who become ill will end up in the hospital, and one in a thousand will develop a type of brain swelling called encephalitis. And about one to three in a thousand children with measles will die.
Cold symptoms, such as fever, coughing, and a runny or stuffy nose, are usually the first sign of measles
The above shows measles cases in the United States year after year, according to the CDC
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) states that 58 cases of measles were confirmed in 2023, down from 121 in 2022.
According to the Mayo Clinic, “measures can now almost always be prevented with a vaccine.”
The measles vaccine is often given as a combined vaccination against measles-mumps-rubella (MMR), which also involves chickenpox (varicella).
Healthcare providers recommend that children between 12 and 15 months old get their first MMR injection, and a second between four and six years old, before they start school.
The graph shows the national estimate of the number of preschoolers with two doses of MMR over the years. Measles coverage is below the national target of 95 percent for the third year in a row
Dr. Ladapo has also strayed from CDC guidelines on the safety of Covid shots.
In October 2022, Dr Ladapo advised men aged 18 to 39 not to get the Covid vaccine, citing a state-driven analysis that had not been peer-reviewed and which suggested the shots could reduce the risk of heart-related deaths by 84 percent increased.
The study has since been dismissed by scientists who say it has major statistical flaws.
According to the CDC, MMR vaccine coverage dropped by another two percent between the 2019-2021 school year and the 2022-2023 school year, meaning about a quarter of a million U.S. preschoolers are at risk of measles infection.
Exemptions from school shooting also reached a record high: more than five percent in ten states.
Experts have said the outbreaks are partly due to the increasing number of parents refusing to have their children vaccinated following the political fallout from Covid mandates and misinformation about vaccine safety.
John Moore, professor of microbiology and immunology at Weill Cornell Medical College, told the Washingtonpost: ‘The reason there is a measles outbreak in Florida schools is because too many parents have not had their children protected by the safe and effective measles vaccine.’
‘And why is that? That’s because the anti-vaccine sentiment in Florida is coming from the top of the public health food chain: Joseph Ladapo.”