The declaration is a humbling moment for a nation that played a leading role in ridding the world of smallpox – the only human disease to have ever been wiped out worldwide – and worked for decades to drive measles offshore.
“This is just so devastating and so sad that we are where we are today,” said Dr. Nuwan Gunawardhana, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Columbia University Irvine Medical Center in New York. “This just kind of points towards the direction of really reversing a generation of public health progress.”
But it also means people who are too young to be vaccinated against measles or who have lowered immune function because of organ transplants or cancer or other conditions are at higher risk in areas with outbreaks than they were just two years ago.