7 votes

Why measles deaths are surging — and coronavirus could make it worse

1 comment

  1. skybrian
    Link
    From the article: [...] [...] [...] [...]

    From the article:

    A viral outbreak has killed more than 6,500 children in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and is still spreading through the country. The foe isn’t the feared coronavirus, which has only just reached the DRC. It’s an old, familiar and underestimated adversary: measles.

    [...]

    The virus is so contagious that few unvaccinated people who come into contact with it are spared its effects. Scientists define infectiousness using the ‘reproduction number’ — how many people, on average, would be infected by a single person with the virus, in a population that has no immunity. For Ebola, that number is estimated at 1.5–2.5. The new coronavirus terrifying the world seems to be somewhere between 2 and 3. Measles tops the charts with a reproduction number of 12–18, which makes it the most contagious virus known. You don’t need to be in the same room as an infected person to catch the virus — it is spread by respiratory droplets that can linger in the air for hours.

    [...]

    In each region, a slightly different mix of factors leads to an outbreak.

    In Madagascar, a shortage of measles vaccine helped fuel an outbreak that has swept the island nation starting in 2018, causing more than 240,000 cases and 1,000 deaths.

    And in Ukraine, after a child died of unrelated causes following a measles jab in 2008, vaccination coverage plummeted from 95% that year to 31% in 2016, says Linkins. He says no one was surprised when, in 2017, a huge outbreak hit that has led to more than 115,000 cases.

    [...]

    A new vaccine delivery system being developed by two teams — one a collaboration between the CDC and the Georgia Institute of Technology and Micron Biomedical, both in Atlanta, and the other at Vaxxas, a biotech company based in Sydney, Australia — could be a “game changer” for measles control and elimination, says Cochi, who is a fierce advocate of global eradication. The vaccine uses a technology called a microarray patch, which looks like a small round bandage with hundreds of microneedles, each carrying a small amount of live, freeze-dried vaccine. Applied with a small push, it delivers vaccine under the skin in 5 minutes.

    “It is very thermostable, takes up little space, doesn’t have to be reconstituted, and you don’t have to worry about safety,” Cochi says. But the measles patch has languished in development for lack of funding, he says, and has yet to reach clinical trials, although these are intended to begin by the end of 2020 or in early 2021. “It is totally frustrating,” he says.

    Until polio is eradicated, the world does not have the appetite or the money to target another disease for extinction, Cochi says. Originally slated for completion in 2000, the polio eradication initiative has blasted through one deadline after another as frustrated donors have poured billions of dollars into reaching the ever-receding goal. No one wants a repeat performance.

    [...]

    The coronavirus pandemic has dealt measles-control efforts another huge blow. On 26 March, SAGE recommended that countries temporarily suspend all preventive mass-vaccination campaigns, including those for measles. Already, 23 countries have suspended scheduled measles campaigns, and others will probably follow suit, says Linkins. This means that 78 million children will not be vaccinated as planned, he says. The DRC, however, is continuing its outbreak response.

    2 votes