Health Ministry stops measles outbreak in Tenerife

The Department of Health of the Government of the Canary Islands, through the Directorate General of Public Health of the Canary Islands Health Service, closes the measles outbreak declared last May in Tenerife, without registering new cases and once. The period provided for in the protocol for taking action in the event of an outbreak of this disease has expired.

The outbreak included four confirmed cases of measles, three of which were minors and one was an adult.

The index case corresponds to a minor who was not vaccinated, while the two affected children had not yet been vaccinated.

The Directorate General of Public Health has followed up with more than 400 contacts of the infected people to check their vaccination status and inform them of measures to take if they start to show symptoms, the note said.

The General Directorate of Public Health of the State Statistics Service reminds about the importance of vaccination to prevent the transmission of measles, a disease of which no new cases have been registered for many years.

In this sense, he insists that the vaccine is the safest and most effective means of preventing infection or transmission of measles.

The measles vaccine is given in two doses at 12 months and three years of age, and 95 percent of the Canary Islands population is properly vaccinated in the first year of life.

Measles is a febrile exanthematous disease that begins with fever, nasal congestion, cough, and sometimes small erythematous spots with a whitish center may appear on the oral mucosa.

The rash, which appears between the third and seventh day after symptoms appear, starts on the face and spreads over the body, is highly contagious and is spread through the air or by direct contact with infected people.

In 2017, the WHO declared Spain free of endemic measles transmission due to the low number of cases and outbreaks detected. However, cases have recently been reported in nine autonomous regions, with outbreaks reported in five of them.