There’s a lot of terrifying stuff in the headlines these days, but one we’ve been keeping a close eye on here at The Show is that measles cases have been cropping up here in Arizona — at least 200 since last August, mostly in the remote area of Mohave County. But as of last week there are three confirmed cases in Maricopa County.
Measles, as KJZZ's Katherine Davis Young has reported, is extremely contagious. It can linger in the air two hours after an infected person coughs or sneezes. And it will infect 90% of unvaccinated people exposed.
Maricopa County Public Health's Dr. Nick Staab joined The Show to assess the seriousness of what's happening and give advice about how to react.
Full conversation
SAM DINGMAN: Good morning, doctor.
DR. NICK STAAB: Good morning, Sam.
DINGMAN: So the first and most urgent question, perhaps if someone's listening to this and has been vaccinated against measles, how concerned should they be? Do they need a booster?
STAAB: They don't. If you've been vaccinated against measles, then you know you've done everything right to protect yourself and your community from ongoing spread of measles. So we really want to make sure that the messaging that we are putting out and when we are talking about these public exposures that people are really thinking about whether or not they are vaccinated. And if they are not vaccinated, consider being vaccinated as soon as possible.
DINGMAN: So that's kind of the prime question to answer, it sounds like. What about people with infants or maybe young children who are only partway through their course of the vaccine? What would you like them to think about?
STAAB: So infants are amongst the groups that I'm most worried about. Those are individuals who can't be immunized until they're six months. They have some protection still from their moms through six months. But that is why in Maricopa County, we are recommending that infants 6 months ... through 11 months, get an early vaccination.
Now that we have community transmission, you know, these are the populations that we particularly are concerned about. They may not be able to be vaccinated or they may have been vaccinated because of underlying health conditions, may not have responsive immunity. This is the whole idea behind herd immunity and why it is so important that we maintain high levels of vaccination within our community.
DINGMAN: Yes. Well, as I was mentioning, the people at greatest risk are of course the people who are not vaccinated. I believe according to some numbers I was looking at this morning, something like 97% of the cases we've seen so far are among unvaccinated folks. That is the group that is at the greatest risk.
What are you suggesting for folks who are hesitant about vaccines? What's your thought on how to convince them to get vaccinated?
STAAB: Yeah, so the 97% of cases in unvaccinated people, those are Arizona numbers in the outbreak that's been occurring since through 2025. We know that in Maricopa County, our vaccination rate, when we look at school vaccination rates is around 88%. So I think that's really important. We have about 90% of our community who has chosen to be vaccinated. But 97% being unvaccinated, that really highlights how — what higher risk those individuals are at.
So I want people to know their risk, to know that this is a very serious illness. There are significant number of hospitalizations, deaths, long-term complications. I want them to have conversations with their health care providers. That is the best person that they can talk to, get information from, in order to understand that this is a safe and effective vaccine.
It has led us to elimination of measles within the U.S. for many years. And I'm hoping that we can get back to that point where we can accept these vaccines, understand how safe and effective they are, and get our communities healthier and safer.
DINGMAN: Dr. Staab, it's just occurring to me. It's possible that some folks might be listening to this and realizing that they don't maybe know if they were vaccinated when they were a kid, and are maybe thinking like, is it too late for me? What kind of recovery time am I looking at if I were to seek out the vaccine now? Is that a practical thing to do? If you were to discover you haven't been vaccinated and want to get vaccinated, is it relatively simple?
STAAB: So totally acknowledge that it is difficult looking back through old paper records to find your vaccine records. Here in Arizona, you can access the state immunization records through MyIR. So if you go to the Arizona Department of Health Services ... you can look for that record. Going back to where you would have been vaccinated as a child is also a good way to see if they can find records. Most jurisdictions have kind of an electronic system for finding that.
If you cannot find your record and you think that you may not have been vaccinated, it is safe to get a vaccine. Adults who have been unvaccinated or can't find their records can get a single dose of the MMR vaccine to be protected.
Again, we don't recommend boosters if you know you've been immunized. But if you don't know and can't find that record and are concerned, we do recommend getting a single dose.
DINGMAN: At the risk of making people panic, measles does have, as I was mentioning, a long incubation period. If someone is worried they might have been exposed or just wants to be on the lookout for symptoms, what should they be looking for?
STAAB: So if you think you've been exposed or concerned about getting measles, the signs and symptoms can be a little confusing this time of year with other illnesses like flu going around. It's cough, fever, runny nose. But the telltale symptom is the rash of measles that starts on the face or head and moves down the body.
If you have fever and a rash and think that you may have been exposed, you need to isolate, stay away from others — which you should be doing if you have any ill symptoms anyway, and call your health care provider. Because we want you to go and be tested so that public health can do our job, which is to keep you and your community safe. Make sure that we're identifying contacts who can also watch for symptoms.
We're really trying to stop transmission in the community so that we can get back to a baseline. And I think just to push one more time, you know, what we really need to be worried about are declining immunization rates across our community and in the country, not only to measles, but other important vaccine-preventable diseases.
These are serious diseases, and we need to find a way to get back to a place where we can get good information and encourage everyone in the community to be immunized.
