US measles total rises to 173
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) received reports of 3 more measles cases last week, nudging the national total to 173 so far this year, a large chunk of them part of an ongoing multistate outbreak linked to Disneyland in California, according to an update today. The pace of the increase seems to have slowed, compared with the 16-case increase the CDC reported last week.
The number of states reporting measles cases remained at 17, and most of the cases are associated with four outbreaks, the largest being the Disney outbreak. Illinois, Nevada, and Washington are battling smaller outbreaks.
Two more infections have been connected to the Disney outbreak, which started in late December, boosting that total to 142, the CDC said. Measles infections in seven states have been traced to the Disney outbreak, with 126 of them in California.
The California Department of Public Health (CDPH) said in a Mar 6 update that it has detected 132 confirmed measles cases in state residents since December. It said 40 visited Disneyland in mid December, 30 were contacts, 11 were exposed in a community setting where a confirmed case had been present, and 48 had an unknown exposure source but are linked to the outbreak due to epidemiologic factors or strain typing.
The CDPH said 3 case-patients have a different genotype from the B3 outbreak strain.
The CDC has said that most people sickened by measles this year were unvaccinated, and it warned that measles is still common in many parts of the world. The strain involved in the Disney outbreak is the same one that fueled a large outbreak in the Philippines in 2014.
Mar 9 CDC measles update on 2015 cases
Mar 9 CDC update on Disney-linked cases since December
Mar 6 CDPH statement
Chikungunya cases in the Americas rise by more than 9,000
The number of chikungunya cases in the Americas has grown by 9,038, to 1,259,933, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) said in its weekly update late last week. The increase was just 2,802 cases the week before.
The total includes 1,231,077 suspected, 25,353 confirmed, and 3,503 imported cases, with most of the imported ones in the United States.
Colombia had the highest increase, accounting for the vast majority of new cases, with 7,848. It now has 185,035 suspected and confirmed cases. Other areas with a substantial increase were Puerto Rico, with 418 new cases and 31,165 total, and El Salvador, with 331 new cases and 143,503 in all.
The United States reported no new cases, remaining at 11 locally transmitted ones—all in Florida—and 2,874 imported cases. The death toll linked to the mosquito-borne disease also stayed the same, at 183.
Mar 6 PAHO update
Mar 2 CIDRAP News story on previous week's numbers