In its bulletin the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, the CDC said that a toddler traveling from India gave a Minneapolis man measles when the two passed each other in a Chicago airport gate in April. The man was getting off a flight; the toddler and family were waiting to board the same aircraft after it was emptied and cleaned. There was no direct contact between the two, but there didn’t have to be: virus-laden droplets of moisture breathed out by a measles victim can hang in the air for up to two hours, long after the infected person has gone somewhere else.
The child who had been in India had had only one of the two recommended doses of measles vaccine, and broke out in the characteristic rash, plus a fever, during the long India-Chicago leg of the family’s trip. With the help of the airlines and several state health departments, the CDC tracked down all the other passengers on both flights, and found no other cases. Everyone was fully vaccinated, and thus protected against the disease.
Except the man at the gate. He apparently was not vaccinated, and he developed a rash and fever two weeks later while on a business trip to Massachusetts. In that brief moment of walking through the gate, the toddler had infected him.
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The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis. Read full, original post: One More Source of Air-Travel Stress: Catching the Measles
