Ontario is reporting 155 new measles cases over the last week, pushing the province’s case count to 816 since an outbreak began in the fall.

The number of new cases has increased again after a few weeks of appearing to stabilize in the 100-per-week range, which public health physicians had taken as a sign of potential optimism.

Public Health Ontario says there have now been 61 hospitalizations — that’s 11 more than last week — including 47 children. Unimmunized kids are the predominant group infected by the outbreak.

Most cases are still in Ontario’s southwestern public health unit, but they spread to two more public health units this week, including Hamilton and Northeastern, which covers Timmins and Englehart.

  • nyan@lemmy.cafeEnglish
    2·
    4 days ago

    There can’t be that many anti-vaxxers, can there?

    Some are likely immigrants from countries where vaccine availability is less. A few probably just have lazy parents who can’t be arsed to make the necessary appointments without someone pushing at them. And yeah, some people are just drinking the kool-aid and making their kids pay the price.

    Used to be that the health units vaccinated kids who hadn’t been jabbed yet at the schools unless their parents made an effort to opt out. Maybe we should go back to that. Not only does it reduce the effort the parents need to make, but normalizing the vaccination process that way might have an effect on parents who are wavering on the edge of the antivax zone.