With a measles outbreak in Texas, and Michigan reporting its first measles case of the year last week, some people are asking if they should get a measles vaccine booster. Dr. Jonathan Beyer is the Berrien County Medical Director and tells us that depends on when you had your shot and how many you had.
“Basically, if you’ve had your vaccine after 1967 and you’ve had two doses of vaccine in your life, you do not need a booster,” Beyer said.
Beyer says the best way to find out exactly what you had is to speak with your doctor. Of course, some people still may not be able to find out for sure if they got both shots as children, and in that case, he says it’s better just to get the shots than to spend the money doing antibody tests.
While Berrien County hasn’t had a measles case in about 20 years, Beyer says he was once comforted by the same thought about whooping cough, and look where we are now.
“Right now in Southwest Michigan, we’ve been dealing with a lot of cases of pertussis, which is also called whooping cough, another disease that’s vaccine-preventable that most of us didn’t think we would see much of, but unfortunately because of lower vaccine rates, we’ve been seeing a lot of cases around here.”
Beyer says health officials are taking the Texas situation seriously because measles is extremely contagious.
“It’s a scary time in public health right now because we’re very worried about seeing diseases that we had thought — I mean, measles was declared essentially eradicated in the United States 25 years ago and now it’s coming back.”
Beyer says to achieve herd immunity — that is, enough people vaccinated to really rub out measles — about 95% of the population would need the shots. However, that number in Michigan right now is 86.9%. In Berrien County, it’s only 80.2%.
Beyer says anyone with doubts about the measles vaccine should speak with a doctor. The Berrien County Health Department does offer the measles vaccine, along with a host of other shots.
Michigan’s one case of measles was reported last week in Oakland County in someone who had traveled internationally.
