Clay County Commission

Dan Haglund 

The West Central district senior epidemiologist outlined the numbers as well as the dangers from the recent measles outbreaks around the country.
Isaac Triebold gave a remote presentation to the Clay County Board of Commissioners on Tuesday morning in Moorhead. Clay County Public Health officials Kathy McKay, Cheryl Sapp and Liz Bjur supported Triebold’s presentation.
Even though our county does not yet have any reported cases, Triebold showed that the potential is there.
The North Dakota Health and Human Services Department has recently reported that two of that state’s 11 cases are from individuals in Cass County, right across the river from Moorhead.
“We always used to say measles was just a plane flight away, typically referring to international flights,” Triebold said. “But that’s not really becoming the case anymore.”
Triebold explained the basics of measles as such: It is an acute, systemic respiratory illness caused by a virus. That virus causes a high fever and maculopapular rash which presents as red bumps. A cough, runny nose and conjunctivitis usually result.
Triebold said measles is preventable with 93 percent effectiveness with a dose at age 12 months, and at 97 percent effectiveness after two doses. It spreads through the air via coughing, breathing and sneezing, as the droplets are airborne and spread easily. Those in close contact with someone who has measles can expect a 90-percent virus attack rate.
He also said exposure levels in a room remain for two hours after an infected person leaves it.
“It’s one of the most infectious diseases we know,” Triebold said. “It’s quite serious. A lot of folks tend to think that measles is just a rash and the kid feels somewhat ill for a while. But complication occur in about 30 percent of cases.”
Triebold went through the timeline of the illness as well.
After an exposure, there is an incubation period of 10 to 12 days. The average timeframe for rash onset is 14 days, but can vary from 7 to 21 days. The infectious period begins about four days before rash onset and can last until about four days after rash onset.
Triebold says the most common complications with measles include diarrhea, ear infections, encephalitis and pneumonia. And statistically death occur in between one and three cases per 1,000.
“What we see in our outbreaks here in the U.S. is about one in five cases get hospitalized,” Triebold said.
He also added that in rare cases (about 1 in 100,000), measles can lead to the fatal Subacute Sclerosing Panencephalitis (SSPE), which occurs between seven and 10 years after infection after lying dormant.
Triebold added that in 2022, 136,000 people (mostly children and mostly in poor countries) died from measles globally out of 9 million infections. One reason: the Covid-19 pandemic caused declines in immunizations.
As of May 15, the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta reports a total of 1,024 confirmed measles cases were reported by 31 jurisdictions: Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York City, New York State, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington.
Last year, Minnesota recorded the highest number of measles cases in 15 years, with 70 cases. This year there have been just two so far.
Broken down by age, 30 percent of this year’s U.S. cases (303) are children under age 5.
For individuals between the ages of 5 and 19, there have been 388 cases (38 percent).
And for adults age 20 and above, there have been 325 cases (32 percent).
For the totality of this year’s cases, 96 percent of them were classified as unvaccinated or unknown if vaccinated. For those who have had a single measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine, this group comprises just 1 percent of this year’s cases. Those with two MMR vaccines make up 2 percent of the cases.
Out of the 1,024 cases, 13 percent of individuals have been hospitalized for the condition, with the highest number (23 percent) belonging in the under-age 5 age group.
There have been three confirmed deaths so far in 2025 from measles, two of which were children.
The CDC also reports 14 official outbreaks (defined as three or more cases) this year, with 92 percent of confirmed cases (947 of 1,024) being related to outbreaks.
By comparison, 16 outbreaks were reported in all of 2024, with 69 percent of the individual cases (198 of 285) classified as related to those outbreaks.
Measles was considered eradicated in the United States in the year 2000, meaning there were no cases of it transmitted within the country for 12 consecutive months. This achievement was made possible through widespread vaccination efforts, which significantly reduced the number of measles cases and prevented large outbreaks.