Measles Outbreak

Don’t be surprised if the number of measles cases spikes after March Break and starts showing up in Haliburton County. That’s what Dr. Thomas Piggott, Medical Officer of Health for the Haliburton-Kawartha-Pine Ridge Health Unit warns.

In the last two weeks, 78 cases of measles were identified in Ontario, bringing the total of recorded infections to 140 – considered now to be the largest measles outbreak in the province in the last 30 years. The disease was considered eradicated here in 1998. The average number of measles cases is usually 22 cases per year.

The disease is highly infectious. At the height of the COVID pandemic, one infected person could transmit the virus to two or three other people. With measles, one infected person spreads the disease to between 15 and 18 others. Moreover, measles can cause severe respiratory problems, pneumonia, blindness, deafness and in the most serious of cases, it can be deadly.