Study Warns US Could Face Millions Of Measles Cases

The Washington Post reports:

The United States faces millions of measles cases over the next 25 years if vaccination rates for the disease drop 10 percent, according to new research published Thursday. No change in the current vaccination rate would result in hundreds of thousands of measles cases over the same period, according to a mathematical model produced by a team of Stanford University researchers.

“Our country is on a tipping point for measles to once again become a common household disease,” said Nathan Lo, a Stanford University physician and an author of the study published in the medical journal JAMA. At current state-level vaccination rates, the model predicts measles could become entrenched, resulting in “hundreds of thousands of cases, where deaths are commonplace and hospitalizations are happening all the time,” said Lo.

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