The country’s largest statewide mumps outbreak just continues to grow and The Arkansas Department of Health (ADH) reports as of today, 2,042 suspected and lab confirmed cases.
Currently, nine counties have active cases–Benton, Carroll, Clark, Conway, Faulkner, Howard, Madison, Pulaski, and Washington.
The outbreak is currently affecting 50 workplaces, 33 schools in 3 school districts, 5 colleges/vocational schools, and 1 private school, according to the ADH.
LISTEN: Arkansas, mumps and the MMR vaccine: A discussion with Dr Dirk Haselow
During the course of the outbreak, ADH officials have seen that 90% to 95% of school-aged children and 30% to 40% of adults involved in the outbreak have been fully immunized.
Despite these numbers, State Epidemiologist and Medical Director for Outbreak Response, Dirk Haselow, MD, PhD says the vaccine has been effective in that the number of complications seen with mumps is quite low for an outbreak this size.
In addition, vaccine effectiveness is the measure of how well a vaccine protects a population, not an individual. The rate of mumps infection within a vaccinated population would be more than 9 times lower than in an unvaccinated population.
Related:
This news item fails to delve into the issue of the ongoing federal lawsuit against Merck filed by two former virologists. The suit alleges that Merck engaged in Vioxx style fraud to overstate the effectiveness of the mumps vaccine. This seems like a fairly relevant point, wondering why it was ignored.
“Two former Merck & Co Inc scientists accusing the drugmaker of falsifying tests of its exclusive mumps vaccine said in a court filing on Monday that Merck is refusing to respond to questions about the efficacy of the vaccine.”
http://www.reuters.com/article/health-vaccine-idUSL1N0YQ0W820150604