>> The number of measles cases in Wisconsin continues to rise, sitting at nearly 650 as of today.

There have been two child deaths caused by the disease.

These numbers put Wisconsin in the top three for measles cases in the U.S.

and the highest across the state in more than 35 years.

Plus, public health officials say it's almost certainly an undercount.

With new vaccine guidance and for more information, we turn to Doctor Ryan Westergaard, chief medical officer and state epidemiologist for communicable diseases for the Wisconsin Department of Health Services.

And, doctor, thanks very much for being here.

>> You're welcome.

>> So the number of cases is going up fast and spreading.

And now with these two deaths, how alarming is this?

>> It's not alarming in the sense that it's unexpected because we know that when measles gets into a community that has low rates of vaccination, this is what it does.

It spreads pretty quickly.

But as you said, we've been used to having very low cases every year.

Zero is the number that we prefer to have.

And up in the decade before the pandemic, it was 0 to 2 cases most years.

So this is really something that we haven't seen in in our careers.

And we fear it's we're not quite through it.

It's likely to continue to get worse.

>> Why is measles so dangerous for young children and infants in particular?

>> Measles is dangerous for anyone but infants under 12 months are too young to get vaccinated.

Their immune systems haven't been fully developed yet, and they have vulnerability to severe infections like pneumonia and meningitis or encephalitis.

So we want to protect the youngest children by protecting everyone and trying to stop measles from spreading in the community.

>> Now you have new guidance around vaccinations for the youngest of children.

>> Yeah.

So it's a trade off.

We know from a lot of research that the measles vaccine is very effective and very safe, but it works best when the first dose is given about around the first birthday.

It doesn't work as well.

It doesn't offer as much protection when it's given earlier than that.

But in.

Now that the measles is not is not eliminated from the community that it's spreading, that leaves a significant number of children under the age of one year old who are vulnerable.

So it's a trade off between getting a vaccine that isn't as effective as it would be later, versus having no protection at all.

So for those 6 to 12 month olds, it's it's really important to get that extra early dose now.

>> So epidemiologists say that out of every 1000 unvaccinated children, between 1 and 3 will die from measles, saying that the deaths of two children in Wisconsin suggests a far higher number of cases.

How high?

>> Yeah.

We talk about this.

And of course, we don't know.

Is it a factor of two, 3 or 4 that we're undercounting?

What we do know is that when we investigate cases in the community, we hear about families saying that there are other families that we don't know about.

And we know that with all of our conditions that are reportable to public health, they don't all get reported.

Some people don't get tested, some people don't come to medical attention.

So I think it's a safe assumption that we have well over a thousand cases in the state.

And how much more than that is, is, is difficult to tell.

>> Was it known to public health officials in Wisconsin that there were so many unvaccinated people?

>> Yeah, we've known about this for years.

Unfortunately, we track the number of and the percentage of children who are up to date on their recommended vaccines by the time they start kindergarten.

We actually put this on a map on our website.

And we've known for years that there are counties in Wisconsin that are well below 80%, some not much higher than 50%.

So this is what we unfortunately expect to see in a situation where too many parents have chosen to not vaccinate their children for too many years.

We have not only children who are vulnerable, but we have whole families who have no protection against this infection.

>> Experts say that the U.S.

is on the brink of losing its measles elimination status.

What's your reaction to that?

>> I think that that is obviously true, given what if we've been paying attention, the current measles outbreak in the country started early in 2025 in Texas, and there have been outbreaks in states that have started and then have and then have ended.

But there's been transmission around the country, new new outbreaks popping up going on two years.

And the public health definition for elimination is that we have no ongoing transmission for 12 months.

We've clearly surpassed that.

So it's a really a formality that the World Health Organization would change that status.

But it's a sobering reminder of how much we've lost, because it was a tremendous accomplishment, a public health triumph to eliminate a measles, a disease that's as infectious as measles from a whole population for so many years.

>> All right.

Doctor Ryan Westergaard, thanks very much.

>> Me.

>> Wisconsin Democrats still have seven weeks still have seven weeks