12/18/2025
Measles is highly contagious and can lead to severe outcomes in at risk populations, especially newborn babies.
Measles is a vaccine preventable disease, so when there are groups of unvaccinated individuals, that increases the risk of it spreading.
“A common misconception is that if everybody else is vaccinated, then people don't have to vaccinate their child because there's no chance that they will get it,” said Thomas Murray, MD, PhD, associate medical director of Infection Prevention at Yale New Haven Children's Hospital and professor of Pediatrics at Yale School of Medicine.
“There can be herd immunity, but if you get pockets of unvaccinated people in a small area, that’s going to be a high-risk environment, even if the rest of the population is highly vaccinated.”
Learn more about how the measles vaccine helps protect children: http://ynh.care/13A.
