SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
South Carolina's measles outbreak continues to grow. The state now has a total of 876 confirmed cases. This is one of the biggest outbreaks the U.S. has seen in decades. But there are some positive signs in this current outbreak. Here to tell us the latest is NPR health correspondent Maria Godoy. Hey, Maria.
MARIA GODOY, BYLINE: Hey, Scott.
DETROW: What's the latest out of South Carolina?
GODOY: Well, you know, this outbreak started in October, and within 16 weeks it had surpassed the huge Texas outbreak from last year. So that was a breathtaking pace of growth. Now, this week, the rate of new confirmed cases slowed. Yesterday, public health officials in South Carolina reported just 29 new confirmed cases, which is a lot smaller number than we have been seeing in their twice-weekly updates. State epidemiologist Linda Bell told reporters today it's too soon to say if that means it's a slowdown in the trajectory of this outbreak, but they are hopeful.
DETROW: Did they give any reasons for why they think this might be slowing down?
GODOY: Well, Bell said public health officials' outreach efforts on vaccinations seem to be working. A few weeks ago, she told reporters that not very many people were getting vaccines at the mobile clinics they were offering. But today, she said vaccinations were up by 162% in January, compared to last year in Spartanburg County, which is the epicenter of the outbreak. And she says, across the state, vaccinations were also up a lot, which is going to be key to stopping the spread of this virus.
LINDA BELL: I'm hoping that what we can attribute that to is a wider recognition of the threat of this disease circulating in our communities and the desire for people to be protected against the complications.
DETROW: What sort of complications are we talking about?
GODOY: Yeah, so measles can cause a host of problems like brain swelling, pneumonia. Those are among the most common. Bell said they know of at least 19 people - children and adults - who have been hospitalized. Dr. Robin LaCroix is a pediatric infectious disease specialist with Prisma Health in Greenville, South Carolina. She's helped treat several children hospitalized with measles, and she says they can get really, really sick.
ROBIN LACROIX: They're dehydrated both from fever and from feeling so poorly. They are coughing and coughing and coughing.
GODOY: She and her colleagues told reporters today that they are bracing to see further complications in kids that can happen after a measles infection. They expect to see more of these complications in coming months.
DETROW: There was also news this week of measles cases at ICE detention centers. What can you tell us about that?
GODOY: Yeah, so there have been reports of measles cases at two ICE facilities. One was a single case that happened earlier in January at a detention center in Florence, Arizona. And this past weekend, the Department of Homeland Security confirmed at least two measles cases in people held at the ICE detention center for families in Dilley, Texas. Whether that turns into an outbreak - so three or more cases - depends on vaccination rates among detainees. I talked with Dr. Katherine Peeler of Harvard. She has studied health care in immigration detention centers, and she points to a measles outbreak that occurred in an ICE facility in 2016. Researchers later found that even with relatively high immunity levels among the people held there, measles can spread quickly in a crowded center.
KATHERINE PEELER: I'm very concerned that we're going to see higher rates of measles outbreaks the same way that we saw a lot of - we saw very high rates of COVID, both in adult detention centers as well as family detention centers.
DETROW: How has DHS been dealing with this?
GODOY: Yeah, DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement that the people infected at both facilities are now in quarantine, and federal immigration officials have halted all movement within the centers, and they're quarantining anyone who may have been exposed. But as vaccination rates decline across the country and we see more measles cases, as well as more people detained at ICE facilities, Peeler of Harvard says the risks of outbreaks grow.
DETROW: That is NPR's Maria Godoy. Thank you so much for your reporting.
GODOY: My pleasure.
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