Ontario measles strain not known to WHO
Posted February 23, 2015 1:38 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The measles virus circulating in Ontario is a strain unknown to the World Health Organization (WHO).
Toronto health officials confirm that the strain in Ontario does not exist in the WHO database.
However, Dr. Allison McGeer, director of infection control at Mount Sinai Hospital, said this is not uncommon and not a cause for concern.
“Measles viruses are measles viruses. They’re all pretty much the same,” McGeer explained. “It doesn’t change the disease it cases or how sick you get or how likely you are to get sick. None of that changes at all.”
She said it’s likely the strain came from a country where measles is still endemic, and because of that strains are constantly changing slightly.
McGeer added that while it’s interesting to figure out where the strain came from, stopping the outbreak needs to be the bigger focus.
“What’s important is that we stop seeing cases and the outbreak goes away and that’s going to happen because of our baseline vaccination program,” she said.
Toronto Public Health reported a new case of measles on Saturday, bringing the total to 10. So far, there are 18 confirmed cases in Ontario.
Dr. Elizabeth Rea, associate medical officer of health for Toronto public health, said it’s believed the cases come from one source.
“This is really one outbreak,” she explained. “Even though our cases haven’t been in the same place at the same time, there must have been one person, probably, who got sick with measles earlier in January and probably went to a bunch of different places.”
Earlier, public health officials in Toronto said it was the Hamburg strain, originating in Europe.
In Quebec, health officials confirmed a 19th case of measles — all of the cases have been concentrated in the Lanaudiere region, northeast of Montreal. The source of the outbreak for the first 18 cases were traced to Disneyland in California, and none of the infected people were vaccinated.
Dr. Rea said the Ontario cases are not connected to the Disneyland outbreak.
With files from The Canadian Press
