Michigan now has nine confirmed measles cases this year, including four cases linked to a widening measles outbreak in Montcalm County. But public health officials said they couldn’t release details about the outbreak, in order to maintain the individuals’ privacy.
“In public health, it's so important that people want to work with us, that they feel comfortable sharing their personal information with us,” said Dr. Natasha Bagdasarian, Michigan’s chief medical executive. “And so respecting that confidentiality is really of utmost importance.”
Health officials did urge residents to get their families up to date on vaccines, as Michigan’s measles immunization rates continue to decline among young kids. Only 79% of kids ages 19-35 months have received their MMR (Measles, Mumps and Rubella) vaccine.
“What we know is in order to protect communities from outbreaks of measles you need to have vaccine coverage of about 95%,” said Ryan Malosh, director of the state’s division of immunization. “So we are well below that number now in Michigan.”
State health officials were repeatedly pressed for more information about the growing number of Michigan cases at a virtual press conference on Thursday, including the vaccination status of seven of the nine cases in Michigan. (Ingham County health officials have already said the two cases there were both one-year-olds who had received the first dose of the measles vaccine, which they believe contributed to why both kids experienced only mild symptoms.)
“Even providing information like people's vaccine status can sort of give a little bit too much information into their personal medical information,” Bagdasarian said. “And it's much safer when we’re talking about measles and a situation like this, to talk about the larger numbers. Because that's actually more telling.” Of the 800 confirmed measles cases in the US, 96% aren’t vaccinated or their vaccination status is unknown, according to the CDC.
State officials also declined to say more about why there are no public exposure sites listed in connection to the Montcalm County outbreak, even as cases there have climbed from one to four in less than two weeks.
Local health officials are “doing contact tracing, making sure that they're doing in-depth interviews with anyone involved in those cases, to see where exposures could have happened,” Bagdasarian said on Thursday.
“So when we say we don't think that there are public exposures that we need to announce, that means after in-depth interviews and conversations, we don't think that there is information that we need to share with the public.”
What we do (and don’t) know about the Montcalm outbreak so far
The Montcalm County outbreak is the first measles outbreak in Michigan since 2019. It was initially linked to a travel-related case, according to a Mid-Michigan District Health Department announcement on April 9.
Unlike other measles cases in the state, no public exposure sites were listed, though county health officials said at the time they were working to identify them.
The following week, Mid-Michigan District Health Department initially alerted local health providers that an outbreak existed, but did not immediately notify the public. On April 17, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) announced that the initial case was now linked to two more cases. (The CDC classifies an outbreak as three or more connected cases.)
“The outbreak in Montcalm County was initially linked to a large, ongoing outbreak in Ontario, Canada,” the MDHHS statement said. “At this time, there are no new public exposure sites to report in Michigan.”
That Ontario outbreak has now reached more than 800 confirmed cases, according to Ontario health officials. That includes 76 hospitalizations, of which 72 patients were unimmunized, including 57 children.
It was initially linked to a Mennonite gathering in New Brunswick, and Canadian health officials have said cases in that country are “disproportionately affecting some Mennonite, Amish, and other Anabaptist communities due to a combination of under-immunization and exposure to measles in certain areas,” according to CTV News.
This week, a fourth outbreak-related case was listed on Michigan’s online measles dashboard. State health officials confirmed on Thursday that this fourth case was also part of the Montcalm County outbreak.
Asked at the press conference if the Montcalm County cases are also among Mennonite, Amish, or Anabaptist communities, Bagdasarian declined to comment.
The reporter’s question “made a connection between a community with lower-vaccination status and linking it to Ontario and counties in Michigan, and that's what we're trying to avoid,” Bagdasarian said. “We don't want any particular community to feel that they are being discriminated against or targeted against. Those are the types of things we are trying to prevent happening.”
Releasing more information “could allow, in some of these very rural parts of the state, for folks’ identity and community to be identified in a more precise way,” she said. “It's very important to us that we are working well with our local health departments, that we're working really well with communities in Michigan, especially, you know, there are lots of communities out there who may not trust government. We want to maintain that relationship and maintain trust.”
The fourth Montcalm County measles case was confirmed on April 18, Mid-Michigan District Health Department spokesperson Brady Guilbault said in an email Thursday. “The only further details that I can provide is that the case is travel-related, and is linked to the outbreak.
Guilbault did not immediately respond to questions about whether this fourth individual was exposed to the virus during their travel, or by one of the three previously-confirmed cases in Montcalm County.
