KY reports third measles case in recent months. How to spot the very contagious disease

Aaron Mudd

A large spiritual revival at Asbury University is the latest site in a string of measles cases in Kentucky after state officials Friday announced they’d confirmed a case in a Jessamine County resident.

For Kentucky, this marks the third measles case in a little more than three months.

What’s more, recent data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicate Kentucky has one of the lowest measles vaccination coverage rates among kindergartners in the nation: greater than or equal to 86.5%.

So what is measles exactly? What are its symptoms and how common are outbreaks?

What is measles and how contagious is it?

“Anyone who attended the revival on Feb. 18 may have been exposed to measles,” Kentucky Public Health Commissioner Dr. Steven Stack warned in a statement about the exposure event.

Stack said anyone who attended the event and is unvaccinated should immediately quarantine for 21 days and seek out a measles vaccine, which has been proven to be safe and effective. They should contact a healthcare provider, as well.

According to information from the Mayo Clinic, measles, also called rubeola, is a childhood infection caused by a virus that spreads easily. It can be serious and even fatal for young children.

Measles signs and symptoms appear about 10 to 14 days after exposure to the virus. They include:

  • Fever

  • Dry cough

  • Runny nose

  • Sore throat

  • Inflamed eyes (conjunctivitis)

  • Tiny white spots with bluish-white centers on a red background that appear in the mouth on the lining of the cheek. These are called Koplik’s spots.

  • A skin rash of large, flat blotches that often flow into one another.

The infection and incubation of measles occurs in stages over the course of two to three weeks.

Notably, for the first 10 to 14 days post-infection, there are no signs or symptoms of measles. The tell-tale rash breaks out first on the face before spreading to other parts of the body and it’s accompanied by a high fever.

The rash itself can last about seven days and fades gradually with skin peeling or darkening possible over 10 additional days.

A person with measles can spread the virus to others for about eight days, starting four days before the rash appears and ending when the rash has been present for four days, according to the Mayo Clinic.

Measles is very contagious and is spread through the air. The CDC says the virus can stay ”in the air for up to 2 hours after an infected person was there. ... It is so contagious that if one person has it, up to 90% of the people close to him or her will also become infected if they are not protected.”

What do we know about the revival that took place at Rupp Arena Sunday?

According to Lexington-Fayette County Health Department spokesperson Kevin Hall, public health officials spoke with the organizer of a recent revival hosted at Rupp Arena Sunday, Feb. 26.

“Public health officials spoke with the Rupp revival organizer to share concerns. There were no reported cases in Fayette County, and there was not enough risk to shut down the event,” Hall told the Herald-Leader in a statement Monday.

The event at Rupp Arena was not affiliated with the Asbury revival.

“The state asked that unvaccinated attendees from Feb. 18 to quarantine 21 days from their exposure and seek immunization with the safe, highly effective measles vaccine,” Hall wrote in the email to the Herald-Leader.

Kentucky’s third measles case in as many months

According to the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services, this latest Asbury case marks the state’s third in a three-month span.

The first was reported in December of last year in Christian County and was linked to an outbreak in Ohio. The second case was reported in January, across the state in Powell County, about an hour from Lexington. That case had no known exposures or connections to the outbreak in Ohio.

“These two previous cases were thoroughly investigated and neither presented a public health threat,” Kentucky’s Cabinet for Health and Family Services said in a news release.

Thanks to the widespread availability of safe and effective vaccines against it, measles was declared eliminated in the U.S. in 2000. However, rising anti-vaccine sentiments among parents is threatening to roll back that progress and fueling concerns from health officials, The Washington Post reported.

Twenty-nineteen marked the largest surge in reported measles cases since 1992. In 2019, 1,274 individual cases were confirmed in 31 states, according to the CDC.

If you’re unsure of your vaccination status, you can check through an online portal here. The portal contains minors’ immunization records held by the commonwealth of Kentucky.

Pharmacies can administer the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine without a prescription in most U.S. states and territories. Check with your doctor or pharmacies, like Walgreens, for more information on the shot.

Do you have a question about health in Kentucky for our service journalism team? We’d like to hear from you. Fill out our Know Your Kentucky form or email ask@herald-leader.com.

Advertisement