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A routine second dose of MMR vaccine, administered a minimum of 28 days after the first dose, is recommended for adults who:
• are students in postsecondary educational institutions,
• work in a health care facility, or
• plan to travel internationally.
Anyone who received inactivated (killed) measles vaccine or measles vaccine of unknown type during 1963–1967 should be revaccinated with 2 doses of the current MMR vaccine.
What is measles?
Measles is a viral infection that is highly contagious. It lives in the nose and throat of an infected person spreads through the air through coughing and sneezing. Measles virus can live for up to two hours on a surface or in an airspace. If other people breathe the contaminated air or touch the infected surface, then touch their eyes, noses, or mouths, they can become infected. Measles is so contagious that if one person has it, 90% of the people close to that person who are not immune will also become infected.
What are the symptoms of measles?
Measles starts with a fever, runny nose, cough, red eyes, and sore throat, and is followed by a rash that spreads all over the body. Infected people are contagious 4 days before to 4 days after the rash appears. Measles is a disease of humans; measles virus is not spread by any other animal species.
Measles can have serious consequences:
Getting measles during pregnancy may cause a pregnant woman to give birth prematurely, or to have a low-birth-weight baby.
About three out of 10 people who get measles will develop pneumonia, ear infections (which can result in permanent hearing loss), or diarrhea. More severe complications include pneumonia and encephalitis (swelling of the brain). Adults older than 20 and children under 5 are more likely to have serious complications. Measles has also been linked to a very rare but fatal disease called subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE). SSPE affects the central nervous system and usually results from a measles virus infection acquired earlier in life. SSPE generally develops 7 to 10 years after a person has measles, even though the person seems to have fully recovered from the illness.
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