{"id":626686,"date":"2025-12-11T17:32:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-11T17:32:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/626686\/"},"modified":"2025-12-11T17:32:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-11T17:32:12","slug":"south-carolina-officials-report-accelerating-measles-outbreak-south-carolina","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/626686\/","title":{"rendered":"South Carolina officials report \u2018accelerating\u2019 measles outbreak | South Carolina"},"content":{"rendered":"

South Carolina<\/a> health officials have reported an \u201caccelerating\u201d measles<\/a> outbreak in the state in the wake of Thanksgiving travel and a lack of vaccinations, with hundreds of people in quarantine.<\/p>\n

The outbreak, which appears centered on a single church and several schools in Spartanburg county in the state\u2019s north-west, according to an epidemiologist for the state\u2019s department of public health, totaled 111 cases.<\/p>\n

Of those, 105 were unvaccinated while three were partially vaccinated, state epidemiologist Linda Bell said at a news briefing<\/a>. A further 254 people have been placed in quarantine as of Tuesday, with 16 held in isolation.<\/p>\n

\u201cAccelerating is an accurate term,\u201d Bell said at the briefing. \u201cThat is a spike in cases we are concerned about.\u201d She added that South Carolina<\/a> has \u201clower than hoped for\u201d vaccination coverage.<\/p>\n

In an earlier advisory, the state\u2019s health department reported 27 new cases of measles<\/a> since Friday. Sixteen of the new cases resulted from exposure at the Way of Truth church in Inman; eight are household members of known cases, and one each attributed to school, healthcare facility or unknown exposure.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are faced with ongoing transmission that we anticipate will go on for many more weeks,\u201d Bell said, adding that the uptick in cases \u201cis a significant increase in our cases in a short period of time\u201d.<\/p>\n

The state\u2019s measles cases comes as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports<\/a> 1,912 confirmed measles cases across 43 US states this year. Most of those cases are attributed to 47 outbreaks, including a significant outbreak in Texas<\/a>.<\/p>\n

More than half of the cases occurred among children and total of 24 measles cases were reported among international visitors. Two girls died after contracting measles in Texas and a man is suspect of dying from measles in New Mexico.<\/p>\n

For comparison, 16 outbreaks were reported during 2024 and 69% of cases (198 of 285) were outbreak-associated, the CDC reported.<\/p>\n

The worsening outbreak in South Carolina comes as state health authorities report<\/a> a decline in the number of students with vaccines from nearly 96% in 2020 to 93.5% in the 2025 school year.<\/p>\n

Twenty of the cases in South Carolina involve children under the age of five, while 75 of the cases were detected in children between the ages of five and 17.<\/p>\n

Bell said the outbreak of measles was notable in part because the US had declared<\/a> measles eliminated in 2000, a declaration that means measles had not spread domestically for more than a year.<\/p>\n

Bell said \u201chigh vaccine coverage was responsible for eliminating ongoing transmission in this country\u201d but that for the past year \u201cwe\u2019ve run the risk of losing that designation as a country.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we\u2019d like people to see is that picture: to consider the effectiveness of the vaccine and having this disease essentially go away,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The rise in outbreaks is partly attributed to mixed messages on vaccines coming from federal health officials, including Robert F Kennedy Jr<\/a>, the health secretary who has expressed broad skepticism about the number and frequency of vaccines given to children.<\/p>\n

However, Kennedy has been in explicit in his support of the MMR<\/a> vaccine that offers protection against measles, mumps, and rubella.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe most effective way to prevent the spread of measles is the MMR vaccine,\u201d Kennedy said in a post on X in April<\/a> after he visited the families of the two West Texas children who died.<\/p>\n

Kennedy said he had directed the CDC to \u201csupply pharmacies and Texas run clinics with needed MMR vaccines\u201d, along with other medical supplies.<\/p>\n

But in north-west South Carolina, Bell said, the deployment of mobile health clinics offering MMR shots had not been heavily utilized. \u201cI can tell you that a relatively small number of doses was administered at each of the mobile health unit clinics that we offered,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"South Carolina health officials have reported an \u201caccelerating\u201d measles outbreak in the state in the wake of Thanksgiving…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":626687,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[105,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-626686","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-uk","10":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115702133434389659","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=626686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626686\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/626687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=626686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=626686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=626686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}