Bloomberg News
@Bloomberg-News·2.8M subscribers·40.1K videos
Measles Cases Reach 23-Year High, Killing More Than 200,000
Posted
November 13, 2020
Views
1,402
Likes
20
Comments
9
Engagement
November 13, 2020
1,402
20
9
2.07%
Every word spoken in this episode is indexed. Type any phrase to jump straight to the moment it was said.
Type any word or phrase that may have been spoken. Click a result to seek the player to that exact moment.
Try a name, a topic, or a quoted line
See what was published immediately before and after this episode.
0:56Now PlayingMeasles cases reached the highest level in 23 years in 2019 and health authorities warned that many countries aren’t vaccinating enough people amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
The global total for confirmed measles infections rose to 869,770 last year, the World Health Organization and U.S. Centers for Disease Control said in a report released Thursday. The number of deaths soared by 50% compared with a low reached in 2016.
The percentage of people who have received a first measles shot has stagnated in recent years and the coronavirus pandemic is now lowering vaccination rates by halting immunization campaigns, putting 94 million people at risk, according to the WHO.
The situation is like an increasing amount of tinder that could result in a “forest fire,” Natasha Crowcroft, a senior technical officer on measles at the WHO, said on a call with journalists.
Nine countries represented 73% of all cases, with large outbreaks occurring in Congo, Madagascar, Georgia, Kazakhstan and Ukraine, according to Crowcroft. The airborne disease caused 207,500 deaths last year.
“Measles is entirely preventable,” Seth Berkley, head of the vaccine group Gavi, said in a statement. “In a time in which we have a powerful, safe and cost-effective vaccine nobody should still be dying of this disease.”
For this year, the number of measles cases has dropped, mirroring declines in other infectious diseases. The precautions people take against Covid-19 are also effective in reducing the spread of viruses in general.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel
Bloomberg Quicktake brings you live global news and original shows spanning business, technology, politics and culture. Make sense of the stories changing your business and your world.
To watch complete coverage on Bloomberg Quicktake 24/7, visit or watch on Apple TV, Roku, Samsung Smart TV, Fire TV and Android TV on the Bloomberg app.
Connect with us on…
Breaking News on YouTube
Sentinel Indexing in Progress
Metadata and chapters are available. Claim extraction for this episode is pending.
All video content is delivered via YouTube embedded players in accordance with the YouTube Terms of Service. Sentinel provides research tools that promote discovery and accountability across political media.
