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Scientists find that measles are likely to become endemic in the SH.BA over the next 20 years


With vaccination rates Among us children’s kindergartens continuously declining in recent years and Human Health and Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Pledge to review the childhood vaccination schedule, measles and other previously eliminated diseases can become more common. A New analysis Published today by epidemiologists at Stanford University attempts to determine those impacts.

Using a computer model, the authors found that with current state -level vaccination rates, measles could restore itself and become constantly present in the United States in the next two decades. Their model predicted this result in 83 percent of simulations. If the current vaccination rates remain the same, the model estimated that the US could see more than 850,000 cases, 170,000 hospitalizations and 2,500 deaths over the next 25 years. The results are presented to the American Medical Association newspaper.

“I do not see this as speculative. It is a modeling exercise, but it is based on good numbers,” says Jeffrey Griffiths, professor of public health and community medicine at the Boston University Medicine School, which was not involved in the study. “The big point is that measles will most likely become endemic quickly if we continue this way.”

The United States declared measles eliminated in 2000 after decades of successful vaccination campaigns. Elimination means that there has been no chain of disease transmission within a country that lasts more than 12 months. However, the current explosion of measles in Texas can endanger that status. With more than 600 cases, 64 hospitalizations and two deaths, it is the largest explosion the state has seen since 1992, when 990 cases were linked to a single explosion. Nationwide, the US has seen 800 cases of measles so far in 2025Mostly since 2019. Last year, there were 285 cases.

“We are really at a point where we should try to increase vaccination as much as possible,” says Mathew Kiang, an assistant professor of epidemiology and health of the population at Stanford University and one of the authors of the work.

Vaccination of childhood in the US has been in a declining trend. Data collected by centers for control and prevention of diseases from state and local vaccination programs found that from the 2019-2020 school year to the 2022-2023 school year, coverage between state-demanded kindergartens fell from 95 percent to approximately 93 percent. These vaccines included MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella), DTAP (diphtheria, tetanus and acellular pertussis), polio and chicken.

In the current study, Kiang and his colleagues model each country separately, taking into account their vaccination rates, which ranged from 88 percent to 96 percent for measles, 78 percent to 91 percent for differ, and 90 percent in 97 percent for the polio vaccine. Other variables include population demographics, vaccine efficiency, risk of importing the disease, typical duration of infection, time between exposure and being able to spread the disease, and the adhesive of the disease, also known as the underlying number of reproduction. Measles is highly contagious, with a person on average be able to infect 12 to 18 people. Researchers used 12 as the basic number of reproduction in their study.



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