Nearly 20 per cent of under five-year-olds in Nelson-Marlborough are not vaccinated for measles and parents are being warned there is a significant risk of an outbreak.
Sonya Briggs, Nelson Marlborough interim service manager for Te Whatu Ora, says dropping immunisation coverage rates worldwide has led to outbreaks in several countries which creates a significant risk for New Zealand.
Immunisation rates across the country need to be about 95 per cent to prevent an outbreak, but it is well below that in all the age brackets for children under five-years-old. In Nelson-Marlborough, the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) immunisation level is 80.1 per cent for children under five.
New Zealand’s 2019 measles epidemic was the worst in two decades and last year there were contained outbreaks in Auckland. Sonya says some children missed doses in their immunisation programme during the Covid-19 pandemic and it is important they catch up.
Nelson Bays Primary Health immunisation facilitator, Valerie Preston-Thomas, says the lower vaccination rates in New Zealand, combined with outbreaks overseas, is a big concern.
“It puts New Zealand at huge risk because it just takes one person to come into the country with the virus and it spreads so easily. It’s more infectious than Covid or flu.”
Young children under five are particularly at risk and hundreds of children in New Zealand were hospitalised during the last outbreak. She says, high vaccination rates particularly help protect babies not yet immunised and vulnerable people in the community.
“Herd immunity protects everyone, but especially those who can’t be vaccinated like pregnant women, immuno-compromised and infants under one year. It really pays to be covered before you get pregnant.”
Around one in 10 people who get infected with measles are hospitalised and the virus can lead to pneumonia, brain infection and sometimes death. Children need two doses of the MMR immunisation to be fully protected. The first dose is usually given at 12 months and the second at 15 months.
