At least eight people have been diagnosed with measles in an outbreak that started last month in the Philadelphia area. The most recent two cases were confirmed on Monday.
The outbreak began after a child who’d recently spent time in another country was admitted to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) with an infection, which was subsequently identified as measles. The Philadelphia Department of Public Health considers the case to be “imported” but did not say from where.
The disease then spread to three other people at CHOP, two of whom were already hospitalized there for other reasons.
Two of those infected at the hospital were a parent and child. The child had not been vaccinated and the parent was offered medication usually given to unvaccinated people that can prevent infection after exposure to measles, but refused it, the Philadelphia Inquirer first reported.
Despite quarantine instructions, the child was sent to day care on Dec. 20 and 21, the health department said.
Yeah it sucks the family ignored the quarantine orders, I agree. Maybe they should be held liable for that.
What concerns me more, and what we should be talking about, is that the kid shows up at the hospital and two other patients contact the disease. At the hospital.
Being at a hospital should not be a threat to ones health. This along with other hospital borne illness and the insane amount of preventable deaths from medical negligence should concern all of us.
Measles is incredibly infectious, it’s why we eradicated it in the first place. Plus there are rules to follow in a hospital waiting room specifically designed to avoid that.
But it relies on people actually following rules, and we can assume someone that didn’t vaccinate or follow quarantine procedure is not a big fan of following “meaningless” rules. And meaningless to them is any rule they don’t understand. Unfortunately they actively try to understand as little as possible so no one can accuse them of being the very scariest word to them right now, “woke”.
The most infectious we’ve encountered and recorded.
Waiting rooms are the worst. I’m so glad we finally have the technology to allow us to check in from home and completely avoid waiting rooms.
It sounds like it wasn’t obvious the first child had measles when they were admitted. The initial symptoms don’t include the rash. Measles is uncommon here, and it’s ludicrously infectious, well above flu or most other similar-appearing diseases.
https://www.cdc.gov/measles/symptoms/signs-symptoms.html
It also sounds like, as soon as they realized, the hospital tried to prevent the spread by giving medication to those exposed. This parent refused it.