Public health, explained: Sign up to receive Healthbeat’s free national newsletter here.
South Carolina has spent an estimated $1.6 million so far on public health efforts to combat its huge measles outbreak, according to information the state’s health department provided to Healthbeat on Wednesday.
The outbreak, which began with just five known cases in October, surged in January following the winter holidays, and has slowed in recent weeks. The total number of people infected in the outbreak, which is centered around Spartanburg County, reached 990 this week.
Most of the estimated $1.6 million spent so far on the outbreak response has been for personnel, the South Carolina Department of Public Health said in response to Healthbeat’s questions.
As the outbreak grew, the number of staff assigned to work full-time on the outbreak grew to as many as 90 people, said Dr. Linda Bell, the state epidemiologist.
Most of these staff, Bell said, have been involved in doing investigations of individual measles cases and tracing their contacts to help identify and quarantine those at risk of infection and further spread of the disease.
Funding for some of the outbreak’s public health costs has come from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, through an immunizations cooperative agreement, which helps with outbreak response activities, the South Carolina DPH said. Additional funding has come from a H5N1 Public Health Crisis Response Cooperative Agreement, which funds influenza and other public health emergency preparedness and response, the department said, as well as some other state and federal funds.
Although the number of new measles cases being detected each week has dropped significantly, the outbreak continues. The department said that final costs will be calculated once the outbreak is over.
But the threat the outbreak could surge again remains – especially with the potential for the virus to spread during the upcoming spring break travel period, Bell said.
“We remain concerned and must be mindful of the fact that we can see cases increase again from the low number that we’re seeing now,” she said. In recent weeks, the outbreak has slowed to about 10 new cases a week amid increases in measles vaccination in the Spartanburg County area and across the state.
The increased travel during school spring break raises the potential for the kind of increased spread of measles that South Carolina experienced over schools’ winter break period. “In the two consecutive weeks following the Christmas holidays, we had over 200 cases reported in each of those weeks,” Bell said.
Alison Young is Healthbeat’s senior national reporter. You can reach her at ayoung@healthbeat.org or through the messaging app Signal at alisonyoungreports.48.
