It’s been 60 years since the first measles vaccine was licensed for public use. The vaccine was derived from a strain named for the schoolboy whose throat swab successfully led to the virus’ cultivation in the 1950s.
Yet, in 2022, more than 9 million measles cases occurred worldwide, and an estimated 136 200 people, mostly children, died from the highly contagious disease, according to a recent report from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO). “It’s very concerning because of how infectious this virus is and how dangerous it can be for children,” Christopher Hsu, MD, PhD, the lead CDC coauthor of the report, noted in an interview.