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about two decades after measles was successfully eliminated from the United States , public health researcher have pinpointed the 25 counties in the nation that are most at risk for Modern outbreaks , include some of the most populated region in the U.S ..
The county on the list screening regions including the five largest U.S. cities : Queens County in New York City , Los Angeles County , Chicago ’s Cook County , Houston ’s Harris County and Phoenix ’s Maricopa County . Counties in many other major American metropolis also made the list , which was publish yesterday ( May 9 ) in the journalThe Lancet Infectious Diseases .
The measles virus is easily passed from one infected person to many more, creating ripples of contagion.
swelled counties came up again and again due to the specific mixture of factors that drive measles outbreaks , the investigator said .
" You ca n’t have a unexampled outbreak of morbilli in the United States without two thing pass off , " say older subject field writer Lauren Gardner , a public health expert at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore . First , " you have to have morbilli introduced , which involve infected traveler from other countries . And [ second ] , you have to have a population that ’s vulnerable , which means they have crushed inoculation rates . " [ 27 annihilating Infectious Diseases ]
That ’s why right now in the U.S. , the risk of measles is most saturated in sphere with both lots of external travelers going back and forward from commonwealth let in India , Japan andUkrainewhere there are currently significant measles outbreaks and with lots of citizenry choose not to get necessary vaccines .
The 25 counties most at risk are, in descending order of risk: Cook, Illionois; Los Angeles, California; Miami-Dade, Florida; Queens, New York; King, Washington; Maricopa, Arizona; Broward, Florida; Clark, Nevada; Harris, Texas; Honolulu, Hawaii; Wayne, Michiagan; Tarrant, Texas; Multnomah, Oregon; Orange, Florida; Essex, New Jersey; Denver, Colorado; Hillsborough, Florida, San Mateo, California; Salt Lake, Utah; Suffolk, Massachusetts; Clayton, Georgia; Travis, Texas; Hennepin, Minnnesota; Loudoun, Virginia; San Diego, California. Adjacent counties are also considered at risk.
( It ’s of import to note that international travelers , not immigrants , are the source of the risk discussed in the study . line multitude andtouristswho go back and forth represent most of the international travel in doubtfulness . )
All of these risks are the result of a orbicular movement of people giving up on vaccines that had once had measlesnearly eliminate in the U.S. , Gardner recite Live Science .
" This is very much a global problem , " she said . " There are huge outbreak of measles across Europe , parts of Africa and the Philippines . And a lot of the font that we ’re seeing in the U.S. are import case that are spawn local outbreaks . "
These " imported " cases wo n’t be the primary cause of font in the U.S. incessantly , though . Already , she said , public health officials have encounter the bed covering of measles within the U.S. The big example Gardner gave was the irruption that take up in Brooklyn , but propagate to New Jersey and Michigan . Counties adjacent to the 25 on the list should also be considered at pregnant risk , she added .
Her team ’s analysis covered a decade , and showed that earlier data point could have predicted some of the current eruption , such as the one in New York . But the depth psychology also showed that certain regions , like Cook County and Los Angeles County , are at meaning hazard of an outbreak despite not yet having had one .
" There ’s different jeopardy factor at play , " she aver . " But the main [ way to prevent rubeola ] is making certain that people are vaccinated . And if the great unwashed are vaccinated then the other risk cistron really are n’t something to be worried about . "
in the beginning release onLive scientific discipline .
