How a single measles case became 5,000 – and the lessons not learned

opinion

Students stand in the courtyard of Pattanasat Witaya School for the morning assembly in Narathiwat, Thailand, last week. Over the course of months, a measles outbreak that started at the school infected thousands in the country and killed nearly a dozen.

Last week, The Globe and Mail published a story investigating how a single visitor to Canada from Thailand – attending a wedding in Florenceville, N.B., last October – sparked the biggest measles outbreak in North America in a quarter-century.

To date, there are more than 4,700 current measles cases in Canada – and thousands more in the U.S. – related to that single imported case. In the first week of September (the most recent reported data), that number ticked up by 53 cases, showing that the outbreak continues.

The story