Higher measles risk heightens anxiety for immunocompromised individuals

Dr. Trevor Arnason, Ottawa’s interim medical officer of health, displays a vial of measles vaccine. Photo by Tony Caldwell /PostmediaArticle content

Mike Bialek doesn’t have many options when it comes to protecting himself from measles.

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“I don’t even know what I could do, if anything, at this point,” said Bialek, an Ottawa resident who is immunocompromised. “There’s a lot of anxiety induced.”

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As measles re-emerges in Ottawa for the first time since 2019, immunocompromised people, who can include those undergoing cancer treatments, living with autoimmune diseases or taking immunosuppressive medications, face much higher risks of severe illness from the virus.

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Once the recent news about measles broke, Ottawans, particularly those who are immunocompromised, took to social media to express their concerns about its reemergence.

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“It’s a big concern because I have to rely on herd immunity at this point,” Bialek said.

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According to the Mayo Clinic, herd immunity refers to the point at which a disease struggles to spread because enough people are protected against it. That is achieved when 95 per cent of the community is immunized, according to Ian Culbert, executive director of the Canadian Public Health Association.

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Dr. Trevor Arnason, interim medical officer of health at Ottawa Public Health, says the measles virus can spread quickly in unvaccinated communities.

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“When you have groups of people who are together, let’s say at a specific school or a specific church or community centre where people are gathering and a lot of them are not vaccinated against measles, it only takes one case of measles introduced into that area to spread it to almost everyone who’s unvaccinated,” he said.

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Bialek is unsure what further steps he can take beyond wearing a mask, and he wants clearer messaging from local and provincial authorities.

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“It would be nice to see a little bit more guidance in terms of what individuals can do, should they choose to take some initiative on themselves to try to protect themselves,” he said.

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“There was plenty of messaging like that with COVID … We’re definitely not in COVID numbers yet with measles — God forbid if we ever get there — but it would be nice to see some kind of information like that from the city.”

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Arnason says the risk to the public is currently “very low,” but he acknowledges that those who are immunocompromised remain vulnerable because there is not much an individual can do to prevent contracting measles once exposed to it.

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“Individual level behaviors are challenging, you know, for the individual who’s immunocompromised or parents of immunocompromised children,” he said. “So, really, what it’s about is about the people around them getting vaccinated. That’s the most important thing.”