Canada continues to grapple with an above-average number of measles cases. There are more than three thousand reported across the country, with more than two thousand of them in Ontario. Alberta is the latest province to experience a surge.
In Ontario, the outbreaks have been unrelenting as infections climb. Health care officials say the main reason for the spread is the number of people who are unvaccinated.
As of early June, there were three thousand one hundred and seventy cases of measles in Canada, more than 21 hundred across Ontario. One of the main outbreaks in Ontario over the past couple of months came in the Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph region, west of Toronto.
Nicola Mercer is the medical officer of health for the region.
“And if we look broadly across our numbers, and by unvaccinated we mean you’ve had zero doses or possibly one dose of a measles-containing vaccine as opposed to you need two doses. But the vast majority of individuals had zero doses, or we had no documentation that they’ve had any, even if they think they may have, we don’t have that documentation,” Mercer said.
Doctor Matthew Tenenbaum is the region’s assistant medical officer of health. He said this year, measles is spreading in a way not seen in recent memory.
“Ordinarily, measles is not something we worry about. It has been eliminated in Canada, which means that we don’t typically see outbreaks. And that’s been our status since the late nineties,” Tenebaum said. In a previous year, we would have had a bad measles year if we had maybe ten or twenty cases across the entire 12-month period. We’re now at a place where we’ve had 16 hundred or so cases associated with this outbreak across Ontario. So, it is much, much worse, and we are seeing a lot more than we are used to seeing.”
Measles is highly contagious and can spread through the air when an infected person coughs, sneezes, or breathes. Illness can come even after brief exposure. Typical symptoms include fever, runny nose, cough, red and watery eyes, and red blotchy skin.
In severe cases, it can cause brain inflammation and even death. Children under five are most at risk of contracting measles and developing complications.
Hundreds of secondary school students in the Waterloo Region have been suspended because of outdated vaccination records. One high school was briefly closed because of concerns about exposure.
“If you have someone who is infectious with measles inside a school, others who are inside that school are at risk of being exposed. A single case of measles in a school can have a dramatic impact on the school population,” Tenebaum said.
Cases of measles are at a 27-year high in Canada, with more than 3,100 reported so far. One death has also been reported in Ontario. Health officials said that since measles was eliminated more than 25 years ago, any new cases are imported from other countries.
Canada’s top doctor, Theresa Tam, retired this weekend as the nation’s chief public health officer.
“Sometimes people haven’t kept up with vaccinations. During the pandemic, of course, some routine vaccinations didn’t take place. So that catch-up has to occur. Parents might never have seen measles. Even some health workers, who work in emergency rooms, for example, haven’t seen measles until more recently,” Tam said.
Tam said along with misinformation, all these factors can contribute to lower vaccination rates, allowing the virus to spread. Tam is calling for a national vaccine registry.
“Making sure we have the agreements. Everybody signs on to them using standardized information, and then makes the technology speak to each other. It’s doable,” Tam said. “I think going back to the COVID-19 pandemic, we were able to each get our electronic records. In Ontario, we’ve seen the QR code. You have it. You know your COVID-19 vaccine records. So that’s proof of concept. We’ve done it before, and I think that the COVID advancements should allow us to do that again.”
Tam said the challenge will be in getting all the different jurisdictions to sign on and centralize their existing records.
Meanwhile, public health in Ontario is reporting nearly 100 new measles cases over the past week, and a northern Ontario region, which saw its first cases in April, is now dealing with dozens of new cases for the third straight week.
