Vaccination key to halt Quebec’s measles outbreak, public health director says

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Increasing vaccination rates will be key to halting the measles outbreak spreading across Quebec, the province’s public health director said on Tuesday.

There are now 18 confirmed cases of the measles in Quebec, including 13 in the Greater Montreal area — four more in the city than last Thursday.

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“This is a serious situation that concerns everyone, but obviously we’re most worried for young children and babies,” Dr. Luc Boileau told Quebec’s Collège des médecins during a presentation on Tuesday.

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The webinar was organized because many of the province’s health-care professionals have never encountered measles in their practice. The disease was considered eradicated in Canada in the late 1990s but is now circulating again in Quebec, in part because of decreasing vaccination rates.

It’s understood that a 95 per cent vaccination rate is needed for adequate protection, but across Quebec roughly 88 per cent of students in high school and 87 per cent of elementary school students are immunized.

In some Montreal-area schools, as little as 30 per cent of children are vaccinated against measles.

Speaking alongside Boileau on Tuesday, Dr. Jean Longtin, a medical microbiologist who advises the Quebec Health Department, stressed how easily the disease can spread.

Longtin recalled how during a 2011 measles outbreak in Quebec, one single infection caused a super-spreading event that was linked to more than 600 other cases.

“It’s a virus that is excessively contagious,” Longtin said. “There are employees who weren’t even in direct patient care, who were elsewhere in an administrative area of an emergency room, but caught measles because of a child in the waiting room.”

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Dr. Caroline Quach, a pediatrician, microbiologist and infectious-diseases specialist at Ste-Justine Hospital, also explained how serious the disease can be.

Beyond the typical red spots, rash and fever, measles can cause severe complications in children and adults and become life-threatening.

“The cases of measles I’ve seen … have been miserable,” Quach said, displaying photos of patients with rashes across their backs and spots in their mouths. “When patients aren’t vaccinated, everything leaks: Their eyes, their nose. They’re coughing and are extremely irritable.”

Asked how to protect other family members if someone brings measles home, Quach said it depends on the family’s vaccination status.

“If measles gets in a house, the transmission is so great we expect that 90 per cent of people who aren’t immune will get it. So there isn’t much to do (at that point),” she said. “Prevention is really the key here.”