The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is tight-lipped after a Tuesday CNN report linked a measles outbreak to a migrant shelter in Chicago.
“The [Chicago Department of Public Health] announced Sunday that there were two unrelated measles cases among children at a migrant shelter in a large warehouse in the city’s Pilsen neighborhood,” according to that report. “One child has recovered and is no longer infectious, the health department said. The second child is hospitalized but is in good condition.”
Two more cases of the measles were reported among adults at the shelter. The four cases are part of the first reported measles outbreak in the city since 2019.
Asked Wednesday by The Tennessee Star whether it is actively monitoring migrant and migrant shelters for infectious diseases rarely found in the first world, the CDC did not respond.
The latest CDC data shows that about 90 percent of Americans are vaccinated against measles.
By contrast, only 68 percent of Latin Americans, from which millions have migrated to the United States under President Joe Biden’s administration, have received the measles vaccine.
A 2008 study published by the National Institute of Health admitted that migrants can bring preventable diseases to the United States.
“Immigrants may have a direct role in transmitting acute infectious diseases from one geographic location to another,” that study said. “The planned movement of 8000 Liberian refugees scheduled to begin in June 2003 and conclude in April 2004 was interrupted several times by outbreaks of varicella, measles, o’nyong-nyong fever, and rubella During this period, 16 cases of varicella were imported into four states and an infant who had congenital rubella infection was born to a mother who had asymptomatic infection.”
“Experts in refugee resettlement have proposed immunization of large mobile populations before resettlement to reduce the spread of infectious diseases and to realize a cost-savings compared with administering all vaccines in the destination country,” according to the study.
But with unfettered migration from many third-world nations, there is currently no system in place to monitor whether those coming to America are bringing with them infectious diseases.
So far this year, 45 cases of measles have been reported in the United States, which is on pace to break last year’s total of 58 and 2022’s total of 121.
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Pete D’Abrosca is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Pete on Twitter/X.
