How quickly can it spread?

MIAMI — How quickly can measles really spread in South Florida?

An outbreak of the highly contagious disease in the Miami, Fort Lauderdale, and West Palm Beach metropolitan areas could kill more than 100 people within nearly nine months, depending on how many people don't have immunity. could potentially infect thousands of people. Have been vaccinated or have never been infected.

That's according to a computerized model built by Dr. Mark Roberts and his team at the University of Pittsburgh and Dr. Karen Riller at the University of South Florida in Tampa.

The online simulator, introduced in 2019, uses a variety of data, including 2017-2018 school vaccination rates for seventh-graders in Florida. According to Roberts and Roberts, the model shows that if a measles-infected student attended a school in the Florida metropolitan area and no vaccination program, isolation, or isolation procedures were in place, “one in every 20 outbreaks would occur.” It shows what would happen in the worst-case scenario. Riller.

What Florida's measles simulator showed the Miami area

For the 2017-2018 school year, Broward and Palm Beach counties had vaccination coverage rates of nearly 97% and 95% for seventh-grade public and private school mandated immunizations, respectively, compared to the recommended 95%. met or exceeded the standards. Achieving herd immunity according to the World Health Organization, according to state data. Vaccination rates among seventh-graders in public and private schools in Miami-Dade County were 94%, slightly below the threshold.

However, each school has its own vaccination rate. Additionally, while some schools may meet the recommended 95% vaccination rate standard, others have a low number of vaccinated students, meaning they are at high risk of measles spread.

To develop the model for the Miami, Fort Lauderdale, and West Palm Beach metropolitan areas, researchers used U.S. Census population data and “average vaccination rates for seventh graders in each county,” and compared public school and private school vaccination rates were calculated separately. They also used the size and location of all schools and businesses in the county.

result?

In a worst-case scenario, if a child becomes infected with measles in South Florida, the model predicts there could be 111 cases among adults and children in the county within nearly nine months.

Although there may be cases among students whose parents have refused vaccinations, about 86% of infections will occur among “bystanders.” This includes not only unvaccinated adults, but also adults and children who cannot be vaccinated due to a medical condition, or who have been vaccinated but have not developed sufficient immunity. .

“One out of 20 times it's going to be worse than that, and 19 times out of 20 it's going to be less than that,” Roberts said.

measles spreads quickly

Measles is a highly contagious disease that spreads through droplets released by coughing and sneezing. The virus can survive in the air for up to two hours after an infected person leaves an area, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC says vaccinated people rarely become infected, but about 90% of people without immunity will become infected if exposed to the disease.

Public health experts say two doses of the measles, mumps, rubella vaccine (MMR) are about 97% effective at protecting against measles, but about 3% of vaccinated people % have not developed sufficient immunity.

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This model shows what would happen if vaccination rates at all schools in South Florida decreased by 10%. In this simulation, the model would circle the county with a red measles dot, causing the number of cases to swell. The simulator estimates that in the worst-case scenario, 54,476 measles cases could be recorded over nearly nine months, 77% of which would be in people without immunity.

“The purpose was never to scare people…the purpose was to educate and show that this can happen. It's a plausible outcome,” Liller said. “Is this always going to happen? No, no one knows.”

But given how Florida's childhood vaccination rates are declining, “we're inching closer to how bad this really is.”

What is the current school vaccination rate in Florida?

Approximately 94% of Florida seventh-graders have completed their school-required mandatory immunizations, including the MMR vaccine, for the 2021-2022 school year, according to the latest school immunization report available online through the Florida Department of Health. . This is slightly below the 95% threshold recommended by the WHO.

In Florida, vaccination rates among seventh-graders were above 95% for several years before the coronavirus outbreak in March 2020.

Broward's seventh-grade vaccination rate reached the 95% standard for public and private schools in the 2021-2022 school year, according to the latest available countywide data. In Miami-Dade and Palm Beach, vaccination rates for public and private seventh-graders for the 2021-2022 school year were below the threshold, at nearly 94% and 93%, respectively.

Florida schools have low vaccination rates among kindergartners, mirroring national trends.

Pediatric vaccinations in the United States have declined nationwide since the coronavirus pandemic, and the CDC says this worrying trend could increase the “risk of developing vaccine-preventable diseases.” .

and measles outbreak They are appearing one after another all over the country. As of the CDC's March 1 update, the United States has recorded 41 measles cases within the first two months of 2024. Ten of those cases were recorded in Florida in February. Nine of the cases are children in Broward County, including seven at Manatee Bay Elementary School in Weston. Another measles case is Adults in Polk County, Central Florida.

Because of the measles outbreak in Florida, Roberts and Riller are considering updating the simulator to show the risk of measles in Florida after the coronavirus pandemic. For now, they hope the current simulation will continue to help spread awareness about the importance of vaccination.

“My hope is that they look at this simulator and think about not only their health and their child's health, but the health of other children…We take politics out of this. We need to see this as real. It's a public health issue,” Liller said.

To simulate how quickly measles spreads in other parts of Florida, visit: https://fred.publichealth.pitt.edu/florida_measles

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