With measles spreading across the country, the Illinois Department of Public Health unveiled a new online tool Wednesday that allows people to look up measles vaccination rates and data about the risk of outbreaks at individual schools across the state.
Illinois has not had any reported cases of measles yet this year, but there were 607 reported cases across the country so far this year, as of April 3, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Earlier this week, Texas announced that a second child with measles had died. In all, three people with measles in the U.S. have died this year, and all three were unvaccinated. Before the recent outbreak, there had not been a measles death in the U.S. for a decade.
“Our new dashboard provides the public with the ability to review the measles vaccination rates in their child’s school and its risk for an outbreak,” said Dr. Sameer Vohra, director of the Illinois Department of Public Health, in a news release.
The new Measles Outbreak Simulator Dashboard uses school vaccination data from 2023-2024 to predict, project and estimate the size and spread of a measles outbreak in individual Illinois schools. People looking up schools in Cook County should look under “Suburban-Cook.”
The state health department is encouraging school administrators and staff to use the dashboard to help make decisions related to outbreak prevention and control.
The new Measles Outbreak Simulator Dashboard uses school vaccination data from 2023-2024 to predict, project and estimate the size and spread of a measles outbreak in individual Illinois schools. People looking up schools in Cook County should look under “Suburban-Cook.”
The state health department is encouraging school administrators and staff to use the dashboard to help make decisions related to outbreak prevention and control.
