Local, Tennessee and federal health officials are keeping a wary eye on Memphis, where six cases of measles have been reported since Friday.
“This outbreak will likely get worse before it gets better,” Tennessee Department of Health Commissioner John Dreyzehner said in a statement Monday, “and we appreciate the cooperation of the hundreds impacted so far.”
A single-dose vial of the MMR vaccine is seen inside the Adult Immunization and Travel Clinic on Jan. 30, 2015, at the Chattanooga-Hamilton County Health Department.Measles is highly contagious and difficult to diagnose until the trademark rash appears. People infected with the virus can spread the disease for four days before the rash shows up, so health officials in Shelby County have been trying to figure out who those infected might have contacted in the days before they realized they were sick, according to Elizabeth Hart, public information officer for the local health department.
All six cases have now been confirmed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Hart said in an interview Tuesday. According to the CDC, only four other confirmed cases of the measles have been seen in the U.S. thus far in 2016, and there have been only nine cases in all of Tennessee since 2004.
The identities of the six measles patients in Memphis are being kept private, but Hart said they range in age and sex and in the part of the county where they live. She said some of them do appear to be connected. All appear to be getting better, Hart said, but she would not disclose whether any of them had been hospitalized.