A seventh case, the first in a child under age 5, follows the state’s controversial surgeon general’s decision to let parents decide whether to quarantine children or keep them in school.

A seventh case, the first in a child under age 5, follows the state’s controversial surgeon general’s decision to let parents decide whether to quarantine children or keep them in school.

The Florida measles outbreak is expanding. On Friday, health officials in Broward County confirmed a seventh case of the virus, a child under age 5.

The patient is the youngest so far to be infected in the outbreak, and the first to be identified outside of Manatee Bay Elementary School in Weston, near Fort Lauderdale.

It’s unknown what connection the youngest measles case has to the school, but the spread beyond school-age kids was expected.

Cases are “not going to stay contained just to that one school, not when a virus is this infectious,” said Dr. David Kimberlin, co-director of the division of pediatric infectious diseases at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

  • @TempermentalAnomaly
    3•9 months ago

    The chicken pox vaccine was developed in Japan in 1974, but not available in the US until 1995.

    • @Misconduct
      1•9 months ago

      That didn’t make it ok to have kids hang out with a sick kid so they’d also get sick 😐

      • @TempermentalAnomaly
        1•9 months ago

        Having chicken pox is considerably more painful as a teenager and complications are more likely as an adult. I could easily see a pediatrician recommending this to a mom before school started so her kids don’t miss any school.

        • @Misconduct
          1•9 months ago

          It was during school and a pediatrician would never recommend something like this now lol. Plenty if medical professionals were against it at the time too. The vaccine was out by the time I was a teen. We could have waited it out.