Doctors worried: “We are in a peak measles year”

The complication rate is 20 percent. 15,500 children under one year of age had not received any measles vaccination at all in 2022. This was explained by experts on Thursday evening at an online medical training event organized by the Austrian Vaccination Academy.

“The time for vaccination would be now. Before it blows up in our faces,” warned Viennese virologist Lukas Weseslindtner (MedUni Vienna/National Reference Center for Measles). The worrying current figures: On Wednesday last week, at the pharmacist training conference in Schladming, the expert reported 219 laboratory-confirmed measles cases with a deadline the day before (March 5th). Up to and including Tuesday of this week (March 12th) there were already 267 cases, an increase of 48 cases.

“We are in a peak year for measles,” said the virologist. The trend looks dramatic in a longer-term comparison. In 2021 and 2022, only 0.1 measles cases per million inhabitants were registered in Austria. They were de facto eliminated. In 2023, the frequency of the highly contagious viral disease in Austria rose to 20.4 cases per million inhabitants (a total of 186 cases within one year). As of Tuesday this week, Austria already had a frequency of 23.8 cases per million people.

• Also read: Too many people “tired of vaccinations”: measles is on the rise again in the Steyr area

Dangerous consequences

According to Weseslindtner, measles – the precursors of the viruses that only occur in humans and have probably spread from bats to humans over the course of history – is highly dangerous. 20 percent of those affected suffer complications. These can be middle ear infections as well as severe pneumonia. In childhood and adolescence, one in 1,000 to 2,000 affected people will develop measles encephalitis (frequency of permanent damage: 30 percent). If an infection occurs before the age of one year, the incidence of so-called subacute sclerosing panencephalitis, which occurs years later and is always fatal, is one in 600.

• Simply explained – what is measles?

The vaccination is strongly recommended for all babies aged nine months and over. Only with a second vaccination (for children with a first vaccination in the first year of life three months later, after the first vaccination from the first year of life only four weeks apart) is there protection of more than 95 percent (98 to 99 percent). But every person should be protected. That is why the measles vaccination (MMR) is currently offered free of charge to all people without age restrictions throughout Austria, emphasized the head of the vaccination department in the Ministry of Health, Maria Paulke-Korinek.

But the situation among Austrian children is worrying. “Among one-year-olds, 18 percent, i.e. 15,500 children, are completely unvaccinated. Ideally, a vaccination rate of 95 percent should be achieved in this age group by the second partial vaccination,” says the short measles report for 2022 from the Austrian Ministry of Health (most current available Pay). The expert said that 32,000 children in their first year of life only had one measles vaccination instead of the two recommended ones.

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