Alberta’s measles surge is so dramatic, the last time case counts were higher Calgary did not have an NHL team, O Canada was not yet the official national anthem and gasoline would set you back 24 cents a litre.
The province reported 29 more cases on Thursday, bringing the total since the outbreaks began in March to 868. That pushes the province past the levels seen during a surge in 1986, when 854 cases were reported.
A higher case count hasn’t been recorded since 1979.
“It’s a little shocking. The numbers we’re looking at now today really haven’t been seen in Alberta since the 1970s,” said Craig Jenne, a professor in the department of microbiology, immunology and infectious diseases at the University of Calgary.
“[We’re] really going back to an era where the vaccine program really was just getting started. We’re going back to, really, pre-vaccination times here in Alberta,” he said.
While there had been earlier versions of a measles vaccine, Alberta launched its routine immunization program for a single dose of the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine in 1982.
According to the Public Agency of Canada, the rollout of the single MMR dose took place across the country between 1974 and 1983. Two doses of the vaccine became routine between 1996 and 1997.
“By the time we got into the early 1980s, for the most part most children in Canada were vaccinated and measles became a thing largely of the past,” said Jenne, who’s also the deputy director of the Snyder Institute for Chronic Diseases.
“There were years with significant outbreaks, including 1986, but as the numbers reveal today we’ve eclipsed even those outbreaks. So we really have thrown the province back into a situation where we’re looking much like Canada did before we had open access to measles vaccines.”
According to the Alberta government, the highest recorded measles case count was in 1957, when 12,337 cases were reported.
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Health officials are cautioning that this year’s official case count is just the “tip of the iceberg” and that there are cases in the province going unreported and undetected.
The south, central and north zones continue to be the hardest hit.
A standing measles exposure advisory remains in effect for southern Alberta due to widespread transmission.
On Thursday, Alberta Health Services also issued a standing advisory for the following locations within the north zone, due to high case numbers and concern about broader transmission:
“Unfortunately we’ve seen this threshold coming now for several weeks when we had seen the establishment of community level transmission, where vaccine rates simply aren’t high enough to stop community spread,” said Jenne.
As of June 7, a total of 75 Albertans had been hospitalized due to measles since the outbreaks began, including 12 people who ended up in intensive care.
The vast majority of cases have been among the unimmunized, according to provincial data.
Alberta is offering an early and extra measles vaccine dose to babies as young as six months old who are living in the south, central and north zones.
Measles can lead to serious complications including pneumonia, brain inflammation, premature delivery and death.
Children under the age of five, pregnant Albertans and those with weakened immune systems are the most vulnerable.
Measles symptoms include:
Alberta Health provides detailed information on measles case counts, symptoms and free immunizations here.
A measles hotline is available for people with questions about symptoms, immunization records or to book an appointment: 1-844-944-3434. AHS is advising anyone with measles symptoms to stay home and call the hotline before visiting any hospital, medical clinic or pharmacy.
