Ontario measles case count exceeds 800 total infections, 155 new since last week

Ontario is reporting 155 new measles cases over the last week, pushing the province’s case count to 816 since an outbreak began in the fall.The number of new cases has increased again after a few weeks of appearing to stabilize in the 100-per-week range, which public health physicians had taken as a sign of potential optimism.Public Health Ontario says there have now been 61 hospitalizations—that’s 11 more than last week—including 47 children. Unimmunized kids are the predominant group infected by the outbreak.Most cases are still in Ontario’s southwestern public health unit, and spread to two more public health units this week, including Hamilton and Northeastern, which covers Timmins and Englehart.Southwestern’s Dr. Ninh Tran says there’s been a 130 per cent increase in measles vaccinations at local public health clinics from January to April compared to last year.That Dr. Translates to an additional 940 doses in arms.Dr. Tran also spoke about schools beginning to issue suspensions this week to some of the thousands of students who aren’t fully vaccinated, and the urgent calls for the province to digitize its immunization record system.Physicians have been calling on the province to create a central digital vaccine registry for over a decade with the spread of measles shining light on the outdated yellow immunization cards.Dr. Tran says an electronic vaccine registry would be “absolutely critical” to better understand vaccine coverage.“People can’t seem to find them,” he says about paper-based vaccine records. “They have to sort of contact their health-care provider and then report it to us.”Alberta’s case count nearly doubled over the last week to 46, as did Saskatchewan’s now six infections. Quebec has remained at 40 for a fourth week.Manitoba has reported 10 cases since February, including an exposure on a flight from Toronto to Winnipeg, according to the latest update Monday.Measles usually begins with a fever, cough, runny nose and red watery eyes, followed by a red blotchy rash that starts on the face and spreads to the body and limbs.The virus can lead to pneumonia, inflammation of the brain and death.

Ontario measles case count exceeds 800 total infections, 155 new since last week

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