Rise in mumps outbreaks prompts U.S. officials to weigh third vaccine dose stat : The Washington Post

(Joe Amon/The Denver Post via Getty Images)Federal health officials are evaluating the benefit of an additional dose of the mumps vaccine because of the increasing number of mumps outbreaks since 2006. Vaccines for chickenpox (varicella) and measles, mumps and rubella at a Kaiser Permanente East Medical office in Denver. Even with the 2016 spike in outbreaks, there has been a 99 percent decline in mumps cases compared with the pre-vaccination era. The mumps component of the MMR vaccine is about 88 percent effective when a person gets two doses; one dose is about 78 percent effective. Federal officials said Thursday that they are looking into whether mumps immunity decreases over time and whether there would be benefits to a third dose.




The mumps vaccine is part of routine childhood shots. U.S. health officials recommend that by age 6, all children get two doses of a combination vaccine against mumps, measles and rubella. That all changed with the arrival of a vaccine in the late 1960s, and mumps nearly disappeared. No vaccine is perfect and it's expected that some people who get the shots will still get mumps. NEW YORK — Fifty years ago, mumps was once a childhood rite of passage of puffy cheeks and swollen jaws.


Federal health officials are evaluating the benefit of an additional dose of the mumps vaccine because of the increasing number of mumps outbreaks since 2006. Even with the 2016 spike in outbreaks, there has been a 99 percent decline in mumps cases compared with the pre-vaccination era. The mumps component of the MMR vaccine is about 88 percent effective when a person gets two doses; one dose is about 78 percent effective. By comparison, two MMR doses are about 97 percent effective at preventing measles, and a single dose is about 97 percent effective at preventing rubella. Now it's down to five or less cases a day."Arkansas has used a third dose of the MMR vaccine in schools to control further transmission.



collected by :Lucy William

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