Three more measles cases in Illinois confirmed

(COOK COUNTY) Three additional cases of measles have been confirmed in Illinois, bringing the total to 9 this year, the Illinois Department of Public Health said Monday.

Eight of those confirmed measles cases are from northern suburban Cook County, Melaney Arnold, a spokeswoman for IDPH, told the Chicago Sun-Times.

All eight of those people — two adults and six children — were unvaccinated, the Cook County Department of Public Health said. The county health department has previously said the children at KinderCare were too young to be vaccinated, but it was not immediately clear if the additional child diagnosed with measles was also younger than one.

A spokesperson from Cook County Department of Public Health said there were now seven people tied to KinderCare Learning Center in Palatine in Cook County. One of those people was an adult who was not an employee at KinderCare, a spokeswoman for KinderCare Learning Center said.

News of the outbreak at the daycare center came out last week. The national daycare chain KinderCare has since required all staff members to be vaccinated, the Associated Press reported.

Another northern suburban person — an unvaccinated adult who was the first to be diagnosed with measles on Jan. 27 — brings the Cook County total to 8.

A ninth person diagnosed with measles in Illinois, as of Monday, was a child who was also too young to be vaccinated and was one of the seven people associated with KinderCare, Arnold said. But that child was not from Cook County, she said. No further information was immediately available on where this child was from.

Illinois health officials are still trying to figure out how the infants at the Illinois daycare center and the adult from northern Cook County became infected with the measles virus. No ties have been found to the December outbreak at Disneyland in California, Arnold said.

The CDC says 121 cases have been reported in 17 states, including Illinois and Washington, D.C., since Feb. 6.

Measles is a highly contagious respiratory disease, but health officials say it can be effectively prevented by vaccination. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says children should be given the first dose of measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine at 12 to 15 months of age. The second dose should be given 4 weeks later, but is usually given before the start of kindergarten at 4 to 6 years of age.

Individuals who are unable to get vaccinated and parents with children less than 12 months of age who are too young to be vaccinated may want to consider limiting unnecessary visits to public places to reduce the risk of exposure to the measles disease, the county health department said.

–Sun-Times