Seething Measles outbreak in upstate South Carolina forced 153 unvaccinated children to leave the classroom and go to quarantine minimum 21 days.
In Minnesota, where a small outbreak has been growing over the past month, 118 students are also in quarantine at the Minneapolis-St. Sex after exposure to a highly contagious virus, health officials said Friday.
Restrictions mean three weeks distance learning as parents monitor for fever, rash and other symptoms.
“Communities are having to bear the cost of quarantining so many children,” said Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease expert and director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. “Expect more. This will happen more and more often.”
Active, constant transmissions
The South Carolina Department of Public Health reported Thursday that a case of measles had been diagnosed in Greenville County, with no known link to seven other cases in neighboring Spartanburg County.
“This new case tells us that there is active, undetected community transmission of measles,” Dr. Linda Bell, state epidemiologist for the South Carolina Department of Public Health, said at a press briefing Thursday.
The South Carolina cases were identified at two schools (one elementary school and one charter school serving students in kindergarten through 12th grade).
Unvaccinated children exposed to the virus will be “excluded” from school for three weeks, which is how long it may take for measles exposure to cause symptoms, Bell said.
“These measures will help us effectively prevent the spread of the measles virus in these schools and in our communities,” she said.
According to NBC News dataThe K-12 measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccination rate in Spartanburg County was 90% for the 2024-25 school year, below the 95% rate doctors say is needed to protect against an outbreak. In neighboring Greenville County, the MMR vaccination rate was 90.5%.
