Wisconsin sees first Measles cases, with 9 confirmed in Oconto County

Nine cases of measles have been confirmed in Oconto County, and local public health officials are working to identify and notify people who may have been exposed to the virus.

The state Department of Health Services said in a statement Saturday that those are the first confirmed cases of the virus in Wisconsin this year.

One of the cases was confirmed through testing at the state hygiene lab, and the other eight were confirmed based on exposure and symptoms, health officials say.

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“All of the cases were exposed to a common source during out-of-state travel,” the statement read. “No additional information will be released due to privacy laws.”

The state and county health departments said the risk to the community remains low at this time, as they have not identified “public points of exposure.”

Measles is highly contagious and can spread from person to person through the air. It stays in the air for two hours after a sick person coughs or sneezes. Up to 90 percent of the people around someone with measles can become infected if they are not vaccinated, DHS said.

Symptoms typically appear 10 to 21 days after exposure. They include a runny nose, high fever, tiredness, cough, red and watery eyes, a red rash and raised bumps that start at the hairline and move to the arms and legs.

Measles can be prevented by the measles, mumps and rubella, or MMR, vaccine. The state health department says two doses of the vaccine are 97 percent effective at preventing the disease.

“In general, people born before 1957 are considered immune and do not need a vaccine,” the state health agency said in a statement. “All other adults without laboratory evidence of immunity should have at least one dose of measles-containing vaccine, and children should have two doses.”

Wisconsin has one of the lowest Measles vaccination rates among children in the country. As of 2023, 81 percent of 2-year-olds had the vaccine, down from 88 percent in 2013. Some Wisconsin counties had vaccination rates closer to 50 percent.

In March, state public health experts warned Wisconsin could be vulnerable due to its low vaccination rate.

This Feb. 6, 2015, file photo, shows a measles, mumps and rubella vaccine on a countertop at a pediatrics clinic in Greenbrae, Calif. A measles outbreak near Portland, Ore., has revived a bitter debate over so-called “philosophical” exemptions to childhood vaccinations as public health officials across the Pacific Northwest scramble to limit the fallout from the disease. Washington Gov. Jay Inslee last week declared a state of emergency because of the outbreak on Friday, Jan. 25, 2019. *AP Photo/Eric Risberg, File*

“For measles, we need something like 95 to 98 percent of all people to be vaccinated in order to protect us from an outbreak — we’re well below that in many, many settings,” Malia Jones, assistant professor in the department of community and environmental sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today” at the time.

By early July, all of Wisconsin’s neighbors — Michigan, Illinois, Iowa and Minnesota — had confirmed Measles cases.

That same month, cases nationally reached their highest number in 33 years, according to NPR.

So far this year, 169 people have been hospitalized and three people have died from the disease, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.