United States: Several residents in the US want to know whether a measles vaccine booster would provide additional protection against measles.
The Texas outbreak in western Texas has reached 279 confirmed cases, and most of these affected individuals either remained unvaccinated or had undocumented their vaccine status.
The New Mexico region has experienced a rise in measles cases, which now totals 38, according to Wednesday’s statistics.
Vaccine against measles: CDC
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), individuals need two vaccine doses scheduled for the first between 12 and 15 months of age and the next between 4 and 6 years old.
CDC statistics reveal that one MMR vaccine shot achieves 93% protection while receiving two shots increases the protection level to 97%, ABC News reported.
According to Dr. Paul Offit, who leads the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, most people with complete vaccines already received enough doses to protect them from Measles, Mumps, or Rubella.
The MMR vaccine should be referred to as a dose instead of a booster to reflect its one-time usage.
What are the officials stating?
According to Dr. Paul Offit, the measles vaccination was only a single dose until medical authorities approved a second dose in the late 1980s.
As per Offit, “In the late ’80s, there were sort of big outbreaks of measles,” ABC News reported.
“But if you looked at the epidemiology of those outbreaks, it was in people who never got a vaccine,” he added.
“So it wasn’t that the immunity faded, that the vaccine wasn’t good enough. It’s an excellent single-dose vaccine. The problem was people didn’t get it. So, the second dose recommendation really was to give children a second chance to get a first dose,” he continued.
According to Offit, a person born before 1957 is considered immune to measles throughout their entire life.
The CDC states that the MMR vaccine became available after almost every person in the population acquired measles, mumps, and rubella in their childhood years.
According to its information, the agency confirms that people diagnosed with measles maintain protection from the virus through laboratory testing.
Medical expert Dr. Gregory Poland explained that the initial measles vaccination emerged in 1963, and scientists developed an enhanced version in 1968.
Less than 5% of the American population between 1963 and 1967 received the inactivated measles vaccine during their childhood years, and this vaccination may not have provided adequate protection against the virus.
“So, the first measles vaccine licensed in the U.S. was in 1963, and it was an inactivated vaccine,” the expert added, ABC News reported.
“That inactivated vaccine had two consequences to it. One, it did not produce protective immunity, and, number two, it led to people being exposed and infected- atypical measles, and that can be very severe,” he continued.