TORONTO – Public Health Ontario says 173 more people have been infected with measles in the province over the past week, bringing the number of cases to 1,795 since the outbreak began last October.
“That’s 173 more cases than we want to see,” said Dr. Sarah Wilson, a public health physician at the agency.
Public Health Ontario’s weekly measles report, released Thursday, said the virus continues to spread primarily among people who have not been vaccinated.
Comments closedHealth officials say measles infected 197 more people in Ontario over the last week as the highly contagious disease emerged in new parts of the country.
That brings the province’s tally of probable and confirmed cases to 1,440 since an outbreak began in October.
Public Health Ontario’s measles report says there have been 101 hospitalizations, including 75 children. Eight patients have been in intensive care.
Nova Scotia and Northwest Territories each reported measles cases earlier this week, marking their first since this outbreak began.
Alberta reported yesterday that its overall case count had reached nearly 300 since mid-March, including three patients under the age of 18 in intensive care.
Saskatchewan updated its cumulative count to 27 cases today, a day after Manitoba reported it had reached 24 cases.
Measles has mostly infected unvaccinated children, infants and teenagers, with almost 500 cases in Ontario’s southwestern public health unit.
Comments closedNova Scotia is confirming its first case of measles.
Dr. Robert Strang, the chief medical officer of health, told a news conference Tuesday that the patient is an adult in Halifax who recently travelled to the United States. They went to the emergency department at the QEII hospital in Halifax on Sunday night.
“We were well prepared for this,” Strang said. “Appropriate steps were taken very quickly when this person came in for care to minimize exposure.”
Strang said the patient had one dose of the measles vaccine when they were younger, but did not receive the second. The Health Department said in a news release that “people generally need two [doses] to be fully vaccinated” against measles.
Comments closedLetters warning of a “confirmed case of measles” were sent to parents of various Yellowknife schools on Sunday evening.
Initially, families at St Patrick High School and Weledeh Catholic School reported receiving an advisory that exposure occurred at St Pat’s – including areas shared with Weledeh – from 8am till 5:40pm on each of April 28, April 30 and May 1.
“All persons present at this venue during the time period are considered to be exposed and must follow public health guidance,” read the letter, issued by the NWT’s chief public health officer, Dr Kami Kandola.
Comments closedOttawa has its first confirmed measles cases since 2019, part of the still-growing outbreak in many parts of the province.
Ontario has now reported 1,243 measles cases across 17 public health units, including 223 new cases in the week since its last update.
That includes new cases in Algoma Public Health in the Sault Ste. Marie area and Renfrew County’s health unit northwest of Ottawa.
Comments closedA new case of travel-related measles has been confirmed in the Lower Mainland this week.
Fraser Health says a traveller from Ontario who went to Vancouver and Chilliwack on April 20 has a confirmed infection of the virus.
Comments closedTORONTO – Public Health Ontario is reporting 95 new measles cases since last week, bringing the total number of people infected past 1,000.
It says a total of 1,020 people have had measles since the province’s outbreak began last October.
The agency says the ongoing rise in cases is “due to continued exposures and transmission among individuals who have not been immunized.”
Without a 5% higher measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccination rate, measles may revert to endemicity in the United States within 25 years, while a 10% decline in vaccination could lead to 11.1 million cases of the highly contagious illness in that timeframe, according to predictions from a simulation model published today in JAMA.
Also today, the World Health Organization (WHO); UNICEF; and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance warn that burgeoning outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases threaten to reverse years of progress.
Comments closedToronto, Ontario – [April 24, 2025] – In an urgent appeal to protect the health and safety of Ontario’s students, education workers, and families, Ontario School Safety (OSS) has issued an open letter asking the Ontario Provincial Government and Public Health Ontario for an immediate vaccine-PLUS strategy, which includes the essential role of healthy indoor air, to curtail the spread of measles. This critical request comes in the wake of concerning measles infection rates – as of April 17th, 2025, Public Health Ontario is reporting 925 measles cases in the province, more than five times the number of cases than the total number of cases over the last 12 years. Encouraging a vaccine-only strategy is insufficient due to barriers to access, and because measles spreads not only through direct contact with secretions or contaminated surfaces, but through the air we breathe.
Comments closedThe measles outbreak that began in Quebec in December has officially ended, the Ministry of Health has confirmed. The situation is quite different in Ontario, which has recorded more than 900 cases.
The spread has stabilized in Quebec in recent weeks, with the last recorded case dating back to March 18. Quebec has confirmed 40 cases of measles during this outbreak, with the vast majority (32 cases) in the Laurentians.
According to the government’s technical parameters for the management of measles cases, contacts and outbreaks in Quebec, the end of the outbreak is set at the 32nd day following the last presence of the last contagious case in an environment.
Comments closedA major outbreak of measles has infected more than 800 people in Ontario. It’s the first outbreak of its size since the disease was declared eliminated in 1998.
Now, lower vaccination rates are leading to a serious outbreak in the province, enough to garner a travel advisory to the province from New York State south of the border.
Here’s what you need to know about measles — how it’s transmitted, how you can protect yourself, and whether you need to update your vaccinations.
Comments closedTORONTO – 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.
Dr. Sarah Wilson, public health physician at Public Health Ontario, says the fact that Ontario has exceeded 800 cases is striking.
Comments closedStuffy, crowded classrooms mean kids are breathing in viruses and pollution. Parents are trying to make the air safer, but hitting roadblocks.
In September 2023, Heather Pun started sending her son to school with a carbon dioxide monitor. He was spending his days in a stuffy portable classroom, and she worried that COVID was being passed lung-to-lung through the stale air.
The device, which reads the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the air, showed CO2 levels as high as 3,500 parts per million (ppm) in his classroom.
Comments closedRespiratory illness season is over, British Columbia’s top doctor said Friday, but the province is set to launch a spring COVID-19 immunization campaign and wants everyone to ensure they’re fully protected against measles.
Provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry said B.C.’s COVID-19 hospitalizations have hit the lowest level since 2020, with about 40 people in hospital, while cases of influenza and respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, have also been declining.
Still, Henry said there have been resurgences in spring and summer in the past, and the province is focused on protecting people at the highest risk of serious illness.
Comments closedOttawa Public Health has begun monitoring wastewater for evidence of measles in the city as the highly infectious disease continues to surge throughout Ontario.
That makes Ottawa one of the only communities in the province and across Canada using wastewater as a possible early warning signal for measles. Ottawa Public Health says the tool is promising for detecting measles, but the research is limited and “many unknowns remain”.
There have been no cases in Ottawa so far this year but Dr. Gregory Rose, who is director of infection prevention and control at Queensway Carleton Hospital, warns that it is only a matter of time.
Comments closedAs Canada deals with its largest measles outbreak in more than a decade, health experts say a COVID-era tool could help tame the spread.
Wastewater surveillance, which involves testing sewage samples for viral pathogens, became essential during the pandemic. The data helped overwhelmed health officials map out COVID-19’s path and better predict the trajectory of cases.
At the time, it was praised as a critical public health tool that could serve as a warning system to keep Canadians safe from future harmful infections. And as the current measles outbreak surpasses 500 cases in Canada, experts say this is the moment where leaning into regional wastewater surveillance would be most helpful.
Comments closedThere’s been another sharp increase in Ontario measles cases as the province begins to release weekly reports on the infectious disease.
Public Health Ontario is reporting 470 measles cases since an outbreak began in October. That’s an increase of 120 cases since March 14.
The spread resulted in 34 hospitalizations, including two people who needed intensive care. Most of those hospitalized were unvaccinated kids, including one of the intensive care patients.
The outbreak expansion adds to the growing concern of rising measles cases in different parts of the country, including in Quebec where there are 40 cases and Alberta where there are 13, according to the latest data.
Comments closedIn Gaines County, Texas, where a measles outbreak has killed one six-year-old and one adult, the measles vaccination rate among kindergarteners is just 82 per cent, according to reporting by The Atlantic.
That’s a higher measles vaccination rate than children have here in B.C.
Just under 82 per cent of two-year-olds have gotten one dose of the measles, mumps and rubella, or MMR, vaccine, and around 72 per cent of seven-year-olds have gotten both doses, according to the B.C. Childhood Immunization Coverage Dashboard’s 2023 data, which is the most recent data year available.
Comments closed
