A bubbling measles outbreak in upstate South Carolina has forced 153 unvaccinated children out of classrooms and into quarantine for a minimum of 21 days.
In Minnesota, where a small outbreak has been growing for the past month, 118 students are also under quarantine at Minneapolis-St. Paul after being exposed to the highly contagious virus, health officials said Friday.
The restrictions mean three weeks of remote learning while parents monitor fever, rash and other symptoms.
“Communities are having to pay the price for quarantining so many children,” said Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease expert and director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. “Expect more of the same. This will happen more and more often.”
Active and ongoing transmissions
On Thursday, the South Carolina Department of Public Health said one case of measles had been diagnosed in Greenville County, with no known link to seven other cases in neighboring Spartanburg County.
“What this new case tells us is that active, unrecognized community transmission of measles is occurring,” Dr. Linda Bell, state epidemiologist with the South Carolina Department of Public Health, said during a news conference Thursday.
The South Carolina cases have been identified in two schools (an elementary school and a charter school with students in kindergarten through 12th grade).
Unvaccinated children who were exposed to the virus will be “excluded” from school for three weeks, the time it could take for a measles exposure to cause symptoms, Bell said.
“Those measures will help us be effective in preventing the spread of the measles virus in those schools and in our communities,” he said.
According to data from NBC News, the K-12 measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccination rate in Spartanburg County was 90% for the 2024-25 school year, below the 95% level that doctors say is necessary to protect against an outbreak. In neighboring Greenville County, the MMR vaccination rate was 90.5%.
