Manitoba measles cases climb as vaccination rates fall
The province's two latest measles cases are both concerning and expected, a Southern Health region official says.
'With measles occurring in such high numbers in all of these nearby jurisdictions, it unfortunately was very likely that we were going to get more cases,' said Dr. Davinder Singh, Southern Health's Medical Officer of Health.
Those jurisdictions include Ontario, which has seen more than 1,000 cases since October 2024. In the U.S., at least two children died after contracting the disease. Typical symptoms include a fever and rash, but in some cases, patients can experience seizures, pneumonia, and brain damage.
According to Manitoba Health, there have been eight confirmed and four probable cases in the province in 2025. Dr. Singh says these are the first cases in the province since 2019, adding the two most recent cases resulted in a school exposure.
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'A number of the children that were present during the time that we're worried about for exposure were or are unimmunized,' he said, 'so… there's a higher likelihood that some of them may go on to develop measles. So that is an additional risk that we haven't had in the other cases in Manitoba so far.
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'If it happens to be introduced in a population that is significantly under-immunized, then just because of how contagious measles is, there's quite a high likelihood that it could go on to spread as we see in Ontario and elsewhere.'
Manitoba's Southern Health region has Manitoba's lowest measles vaccination rate among seven-year-olds, at 53.3 per cent in 2023, the last year data is available. The measles vaccination rate in that cohort declined steadily between 2020 and 2023, as did the province-wide rate for the same age group: from 74.3 per cent in 2020, to 65.4 per cent in 2023.
University of Manitoba Professor of Community Health Sciences Dr. Michelle Driedger says a number of factors are at play.
'We do know that [with] COVID-19 and the pandemic… there were a lot of disruptions to people accessing vaccines,' she said.
'I think conflated within that is a lot of the COVID-19 vaccines and… a lot of the discourse around that also started to shift peoples' attitudes to vaccines more generally.'
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Dr. Driedger adds some people who haven't gotten their or their children's vaccinations up to date aren't necessarily opposed to vaccines, but are 'vaccine lazy,' having put off getting their shots as it wasn't convenient.
Driedger says public health messaging that is specific to each type of vaccine is more effective in helping vaccine-hesitant people make a decision.
'If they don't feel they have enough information or they don't have enough confidence in that decision, sometimes they'll choose not to vaccinate their kid… not always recognizing that that also is a choice,' she said, adding messaging should be tailored to specific audiences and regions.
'When we look at vaccine hesitancy, it's often more important to talk about very specific vaccine hesitancies, and even to help provide understanding of what are the complications of actual exposure to the disease compared to exposure to the vaccine.'
A list of exposure sites in Manitoba can be found on Manitoba Health's website.
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