In early 2006, Poland experienced a sudden and unexpected spike in measles cases after years of keeping the disease well under control. In just five months, 60 people fell ill\u2014a huge jump compared to the 11 to 13 cases seen per year previously. The virus flared up in several regions across the country, mostly spreading among young adults who were either unvaccinated or had missed their second vaccine dose. The outbreak appeared to be sparked by cases brought over from neighboring Ukraine, which was battling a major measles surge at the time, likely carried across the border by traveling students and cross-border visitors. Because scientists couldn’t complete genetic testing on the virus samples at the time, they couldn’t map the exact chain of transmission with 100% certainty. Nevertheless, the lesson was clear: even in countries with overall high vaccination rates, small “imported” cases can quickly find unvaccinated groups and ignite new outbreaks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This was my very first rapid communication about a measles outbreak in Poland. Back then, Europe was optimistic that we were on the verge of wiping out measles for good. The last twenty years, however, have shown that defeating this virus is going to be a much longer fight \ud83d\ude41<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Article in English published in the journal Eurosurveillance<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":1074,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":true},"class_list":["post-1319","publikacje","type-publikacje","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pawel.stefanoff.pl\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/publikacje\/1319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pawel.stefanoff.pl\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/publikacje"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pawel.stefanoff.pl\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/publikacje"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pawel.stefanoff.pl\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pawel.stefanoff.pl\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}