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Measles Vaccination

Thursday, 5 February 2015 06:22

A 95% coverage rate in measles vaccinations is required for an area to be considered protected; Oxford County is just below that level.

OXFORD COUNTY - With four confirmed cases of measles in Toronto, Health Officials are once again reminding residents to ensure their immunizations are up to date.

Program Supervisor in Health Protection at Oxford Public Health, Joanne Andrews says the County only statistics on school pupils as part of the Immunization of School Pupils Act and not on adults to say how many people in the County are properly immunized.

"For people to be protected from the disease, we are looking for about a 95 percent coverage rate in the population and for measles we are just below that rate in Oxford County."

Another hurdle for healthcare providers is vaccine wary parents and Andrews says following the Ontario Immunizations schedule is what is recommended to protect your child against illness. "We all know that parents want to do the best for their children and sometimes it's hard for them to make a good decision based on some of the information that's out there. It's important for parents to find out what the risk of the illness are because that's something we may not be very familiar with and there isn't a lot of information out there."

Andrews says measles is a virus which causes fever, cough, a runny nose, irritated and red eyes which as sensitive to light and a rash which appears about 4 days after the initial symptoms.

Measles is a highly contagious virus which is easily spread. Andrews says anyone who thinks they may have the virus is asked to contact their doctor's office ahead of a visit to ensure there aren't others in the waiting room who could contract the virus.

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