Mother of Chicago child with measles: It was ‘one of the scarier moments of my life’

CNN
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When Vincent, Jessica Coletti’s 3-year-old son, having lost her usual pep in the last month, she feared something was seriously wrong.

“Mom, I’m not okay,” the normally energetic boy told his mother on a Saturday in early March. On Monday, the Chicago mother of two said Vincent no longer moved much or spoke.

“His eyes looked super empty,” Coletti said, describing her son’s eyes, glassy with fever. that of Vincent the eyes were also red and he had a rash. He had tested positive for Covid-19 at the time, but Coletti felt like something else didn’t seem right.

The family’s neighbor, a nurse, came to see the boy and urged Coletti to take him to the hospital immediately.

“It was definitely one of the scariest moments of my life,” Coletti said.

A few a few days after the 3-year-old’s hospital visit, test results came back positive for a highly infectious disease that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention considered officially “eliminated” from the United States since 2000.

Vincent had measles.

Coletti lives in one of the 17 states have reported measles outbreaks this year.
As of April 18, there have been 125 cases, according to the CDC. Last year there were only 58 cases. The United States typically sees about 72 cases per year, according to the CDC.

In the United States, most cases of measles occur when a person travels abroad to a country where the virus is present. was not eliminated, but Coletti’s son did not leave the country. He wasn’t even enrolled in school yet. Most of the cases in Chicago this year were linked to a temporary shelter set up for migrants, but he hadn’t been there either.

Coletti may never know how Vincent caught it, doctors say.

“Measles is terribly contagious. You could stand in line at a grocery store with someone who has had measles and catch it and not know it because the measles virus stays in the air for so long,” said Dr. Claudia Hoyen, director of the pediatric infection control at UH. Rainbow Baby and Children Hospital in Cleveland. Hoyen did not treat Coletti’s son.

Coletti said her son has been partially vaccinated, but has not yet received his second shot because he is too young.

In the United States, the CDC recommends that children receive the first dose of the vaccine that protects against measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) between 12 and 15 months of age. Children receive a second injection between 4 and 6 years old.

The measles vaccine is considered very effective. One dose is 93% effective against measles, with two it is 97% effective. Vaccinated people can still get sick, but it doesn’t happen often and is usually a milder infection.

“Little children with measles look miserable. They don’t feel well at all,” Hoyen said. But, she said, Coletti’s son was lucky to be protected from even a single dose of the drug. vaccine. Measles can be fatal to unvaccinated people and lead to even more serious health problems, including encephalitis and pneumonia.

“Especially if he had Covid and measles at the same time. I would be concerned that he is someone who could get pneumonia because he already had something affecting his airways, so it’s a good thing he was vaccinated,” Hoyen said.

Coletti said they waited a long time to be seen at a local hospital, but Vincent was admitted as doctors ran tests and treated him with intravenous fluids. A day later, the boy started feeling better and his rash seemed to disappear, Coletti said, and Vincent sent him home.

But it wasn’t over. The phone rang two days later and Coletti learned of his measles diagnosis.

It wasn’t just a sick child Coletti had on her hands: She was inundated with other calls related to the virus.

Coletti said the Chicago Department of Public Health called first, followed by her son’s doctor’s office. And then she received another call from the hospital where her son had been admitted..

“It was a doctor who let me know that my son had been exposed to measles in the emergency room and I was like ‘no, it was my son who exposed your emergency room,'” Coletti said.

Although her son started to feel better by the end of the week, The CDC recommends that sick people stay isolated for four days after the rash begins, because the virus is very contagious. People with measles can infect others four days before the rash and four days after, studies show. The virus can remain in the air for at least two hours after a person with measles leaves the area.

Because Coletti’s little girl was too young to be vaccinated, Coletti feared she would test positive for the virus, so the entire family had to stay home. The Health Ministry also told her that she and her husband had to stay home until they could prove they were not sick and had been vaccinated.

“The nightmare wasn’t just that my son was sick. It was horrible, but that’s your whole world. You can’t go to work. You can’t do this or that, and you can’t even believe it,” Coletti said. “You never think it’s going to happen to you, but until you have to deal with all those phone calls trying to figure out what’s going on and tracking the last 21 days of your life so they can try to “Connecting yourself to someone else who has it. It’s more than you think.”

Every time someone tests positive for measles, public health tries to trace anyone who may have come into contact with that person to help stop the spread.

Blood tests ultimately showed that Coletti and her husband were protected by vaccination.

Dr. Frank Belmonte, chief medical officer and chairman of pediatrics at Advocate Children’s Hospital in the Chicago area, said that with the city’s recent measles outbreak, hospital staff have made a lot of mitigation efforts. The city has recorded 63 cases so far this year.

Belmonte said Advocate Children’s Hospital is trying to be proactive. Workers review patient records to see who is behind on their vaccines and call people to encourage them to get up to date. They also led education and awareness efforts about measles. in the community in various languages. And because measles was so rare, they also had to train staff to recognize the symptoms.

“We’ve also done a lot of education to our physician community, telling them to be on the lookout for symptoms. and understand what the rash looks like,” Belmonte said. “Many doctors of this generation have rarely or never seen a case of measles.”

When his hospital receives a case, Belmonte says they call anyone who may have been exposed, as well as understand a plan for those who might get sick.

“We learned a lot during Covid about how to do this and how to work well with our state and local public health authorities and I think we took those techniques and applied them to this particular measles situation as well “, Belmonte said.

Hoyen, with UH Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital, said health systems need to be more aware of measles cases in the community. For example, even when Cleveland had no cases of measles last summer, hospital staff knew to ask patients if they had traveled to Columbus, Ohio, when that city had a epidemic.

“Kind of like what we were doing with Covid, to help screen people — again, because measles is terribly contagious,” Hoyen said.

Hoyen is concerned about the downward trend in vaccination rates among kindergartners in the United States, but she hopes recent education efforts will help people understand why they should protect themselves.

“Anything we can do to make people understand that it’s not just a rash, it could be pneumonia or encephalitis and you can die,” said Hoyen. “You don’t want to put kids at risk because of this.” »

Coletti saw what a “mild” case looked like with her partially vaccinated child and said she wouldn’t wish that on anyone.

“It was a lot at once,” Coletti said.