As vaccination rates drop, measles outbreak is now an emergency in Washington State

An outbreak of measles has also occurred in the Orthodox Jewish community in New York, where 64 confirmed cases of measles were reported, mostly late last year.

Written by Kirk Johnson

Measles, declared eliminated as a major public health threat in the United States almost 20 years ago, has re-emerged this winter in the Pacific Northwest and other states where parents have relatively broad leeway over whether to vaccinate their children.

Seventy-nine cases of measles have been reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention since the start of this year. Fifty cases of the highly contagious disease were in Washington State.

An outbreak of measles has also occurred in the Orthodox Jewish community in New York, where 64 confirmed cases of measles were reported, mostly late last year. That outbreak began, the CDC said, when a child who had not had a measles vaccination caught the virus on a visit to Israel, where a large outbreak of the disease was occurring.

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Pacific Northwest measles outbreak grows

A measles outbreak in the Pacific Northwest has sicked 38 people so far and has forced some people to change their daily routine. One mother says she's not taking her 11-month-old son out in public until he gets his measles vaccine at age one.

But no place has been hit harder since January than Clark County, Washington, a fast-growing corner of the metropolitan area near Portland, Oregon. Clark County health officials declared a medical emergency last month, and say they have seen 49 cases — most of them in children under the age of 10.

Clark County has one of the lowest vaccination rates in Washington state. About 78 percent of the kindergarten through high school population is vaccinated, according to state figures. Along with other cities mainly in the West — including Seattle, Phoenix, Salt Lake City and Houston — Portland is considered a hot spot for families that opt not to vaccinate for medical, philosophical or religious reasons.