- Father speaks out after 1-year-old son dies of suspected Opioid exposure at Bronx daycare Eyewitness News ABC7NY
- Devastated Bronx dad ‘never expected’ 1-year-old son to die of suspected day care fentanyl overdose; center ‘looked like a nice place’ Yahoo! Voices
- Bronx daycare owner and accomplice head to court to face murder charges in suspected fentanyl death of boy, 1 New York Daily News
- 2 people arrested after suspected exposure to opioids at Bronx day care leaves 1-year-old dead and 3 children hospitalized CNN
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2 Newborn Girls Found Dead In Bathroom Of Streeterville Daycare After Staff Member’s ‘Unanticipated Delivery’ – Block Club Chicago
- 2 Newborn Girls Found Dead In Bathroom Of Streeterville Daycare After Staff Member’s ‘Unanticipated Delivery’ Block Club Chicago
- Chicago day care deaths: 2 babies dead in Streeterville neighborhood USA TODAY
- 2 baby girls die after being found in bathroom at Streeterville child care center CBS Chicago
- 2 newborns found dead in bathroom in Streeterville child care center near Northwestern Hospital, Chicago police say WLS-TV
- Safe haven locations for infants include fire stations; fire chief says ‘you don’t have to have fear of reprisal’ WPSD Local 6
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Chase: 2-year-old Texas girl dies after father takes her out of daycare, attacks mom, leads authorities on chase – KABC-TV
- Chase: 2-year-old Texas girl dies after father takes her out of daycare, attacks mom, leads authorities on chase KABC-TV
- Child dies after father leads police on chase in NW Harris County, sheriff says KHOU 11
- Toddler killed after chase in northwest Harris County KPRC 2 Click2Houston
- Chase ends with suspect Deontray Flanagan driving into NW Harris Co. field with 2-year-old daughter who later dead, deputies say KTRK-TV
- Father charged with murder of 2-year-old daughter after domestic dispute, chase in NW Harris County: HCSO KPRC Click2Houston
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Measles outbreak erupts among unvaccinated children in Ohio daycare
Enlarge / This child, who had been ill with measles, exhibited the characteristic rash on the fourth day of its evolution. Measles can cause hearing loss, brain damage, and be fatal to young children.
Amid declining vaccination rates nationwide, an outbreak of measles has erupted this week among unvaccinated children at a childcare facility in Columbus, Ohio.
The outbreak has sickened at least four children so far, all of whom are unvaccinated with no history of travel, meaning they contracted the highly contagious virus locally, according to Columbus-area health officials. An investigation into the outbreak is ongoing. Health officials are notifying parents and tracing contacts. The childcare facility is cooperating and has temporarily closed.
Columbus CBS affiliate WBNS-TV reported that one of the four cases had been hospitalized in intensive care. Officials also told the outlet that they expect additional cases will be identified in the coming days.
Reached by email on Thursday, a representative for Columbus Public Health told Ars that all four cases are now recovering at home.
The representative did not have current or past information on vaccination rates in the area because it is not reported to the city health department. Ars reached out to the state health department for that information, but a spokesperson said the information was not readily available. We’ll update this post when they come through.
Worrying trends
But previously published data on vaccination rates statewide and nationwide show clear declines amid the pandemic. Earlier this year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published an analysis finding that vaccination coverage among kindergartners declined by one percentage point between the 2019-2020 school year and 2020-2021, falling from approximately 95 percent to 94 percent.
In Ohio, the decline was sharper statewide. In the 2019-2020 school year, 92.4 percent of kindergartners had been vaccinated for measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR). But in the 2020-2021 school year, coverage fell to 89.6 percent.
Columbus Public Health Commissioner Dr. Mysheika Roberts told WBNS that she had noted a trend among local parents who declined to get their children vaccinated. “The most important thing you can do to protect against measles is to get vaccinated with the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine, which is safe and highly effective,” Roberts said.
The outbreak, though still small and localized, fuels anxiety among public health officials over the hold antivaccine sentiments have in the country. While antivaccine views had insidiously spread for years before the pandemic, they mushroomed into the mainstream amid a flood of misinformation and politicization of public health that followed COVID-19. As Republican lawmakers lashed out against COVID-19 vaccine mandates and other health measures intended to lower transmission and prevent deaths and illness, the efforts spilled over to routine vaccination.
In Ohio, for instance, Republican lawmakers introduced a sweeping antivaccine bill last year that would essentially override all vaccination requirements in the state, allowing people to decline vaccines simply by stating “reasons of conscience.” The bill, which was supported by testimony from a doctor who falsely claimed COVID-19 vaccinations cause people to become magnetic, has since stalled in committee. Still, this year, at least 25 states have considered dozens of bills to roll back childhood vaccination requirements.
Preventable
For now, vaccination rates on national and most state levels are fair, often below the target of 95 percent, but still generally strong. However, as the ongoing polio outbreak in New York has demonstrated, decent overall vaccination rates can hide pockets of dramatically under-vaccinated communities. One area of a polio-affected county in New York, for instance, has a polio vaccination rate among children under 24 months old as low as 37 percent. That same county, Rockland, also had an explosive measles outbreak in 2019.
The pockets of low vaccination could fuel continued bursts of dangerous, vaccine-preventable disease spread, chipping away at the success of mass vaccination campaigns, one of the biggest triumphs of modern public health. The spread of polio and measles is particularly concerning—they’re both highly contagious and dangerous.
Measles can spread by coughing, talking, or simply being in the same room as someone with the virus. Ninety percent of unvaccinated people who are exposed will become ill, and 1 in 5 will require hospitalization, Ohio’s Franklin County health department noted in a press release (Franklin County encompasses Columbus).
“Measles is both highly contagious and preventable,” Joe Mazzola, Franklin County health commissioner, said in the release. “It can be a severe illness, so we strongly encourage anyone who has not been vaccinated to get vaccinated to prevent further spread.”
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Thailand day-care center mass shooting kills dozens, including children
Fifteen others were wounded, eight critically, in the attack in the province of Nong Bua Lamphu, a largely agricultural region that has one of the highest poverty rates in Thailand.
According to officials, Panya barged into the day-care center in the Naklang district of Nong Bua Lamphu just before 1 p.m. He killed 23 people, most of them young children, before fleeing in a white pickup truck. During his escape, he shot and killed nine more people.
The youngest victim was 2 years old, officials at the Naklang district police station told The Washington Post. They added that most of the children were asleep when the attack happened because it was nap time.
Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha called the incident “shocking” in a statement, adding that he was sending the national police chief, Damrongsak Kittiprapha, to the crime scene.
“I would like to say sorry to all the families who lost their loved ones,” Damrongsak told reporters before traveling to Nong Bua Lamphu. “I’m going to fly to the site and personally command the operation.”
Mass shootings are rare in Thailand, though rates of gun ownership — and gun homicides — are higher here than in other parts of Asia. Thailand, with a population of nearly 70 million, has more than 10 million privately owned guns, of which over 4 million are illegal, according to a database run by the University of Sydney in Australia.
In 2020, in what was then the deadliest mass shooting in Thailand’s history, a soldier who was angered over a personal land dispute killed 29 people and injured 57 others in the city Nakhon Ratchasima.
The gunman trapped and killed victims inside a busy shopping mall, holding out for hours before he was eventually shot and killed by law enforcement. Deadly violence is less common in northern Thailand than in the south, where the military has been engaged in a decades-old conflict with insurgents. Some of the country’s deadliest events have been military crackdowns on protesters.
Tan reported from Singapore. Annabelle Timsit in London contributed to this report.
Monkeypox at a daycare was ‘only a matter of time,’ expert says. Next up: pools, sports, schools
“It was only a mater of time” before monkeypox made it to congregate settings, a pediatric infectious disease specialist told Fortune, after Illinois state officials announced Friday that a daycare worker had been diagnosed with the smallpox-related virus.
“There is definitely potential for spread of monkeypox” in daycares, schools, college campuses, prisons, and other similar settings, said Dr. Alexandra Brugler Yonts, an infectious disease specialist at Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C. She assisted in the FDA’s review of Jynneos—one of two smallpox vaccines licensed for treatment of monkeypox, and the safer of the two by far.
“Anywhere that close physical, skin-to-skin contact occurs—particularly of people who are in various stages of undress—there is risk,” she said.
All children and adults at the unidentified daycare center in Champaign County, Illinois, were being screened, and no additional cases had been identified, state health officials said Friday, adding that Gov. J. B. Pritzker has been in touch with the White House regarding the situation.
But schools and congregate living settings aren’t the only settings ripe for spread, Brugler Yonts said. Also on her list of locations where transmission could occur: pools and waterparks—”not through the water, but through bumping up against someone with active lesions—especially in the summer, given the heat and tendency for minimizing clothing.”
Contact sports like football and wrestling could prove problematic too, she added.
“Hopefully outbreaks can be contained more locally, but as people continue to travel, participate in the [aforementioned] activities, and then with school starting soon …. I think this is going to be more widespread. There have already been cases in almost every state in the U.S.”
As of Friday 7,510 cases had been identified in the U.S., with the majority of cases in New York, California, and Florida, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Every state except for Wyoming and Montana had cases identified.
More than 28,000 cases had been reported globally since January, virtually all in countries where monkeypox is not considered endemic, according to the CDC. The U.S. now leads the world in identified cases, followed by Spain, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and Brazil. Only 345 cases have been seen since January in African countries where the virus is considered endemic. Eighty-one children had been infected as of late July, according to the World Health Organization.
Illinois health officials Friday said the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had authorized the use of Jynneos, licensed for use in adults 18 and older, for potentially affected children at the center, “without jumping through normal hoops.” Mobile testing and vaccination services were on site, they added.
An FDA spokesperson told Fortune via email on Friday that the vaccine was being approved for such children via a “single patient expanded access investigational new drug application” submitted for each. Applications are processed “as quickly as possible” and approved “when no comparable or satisfactory alternative options are available and requested by the treating licensed physicians, who determine whether the benefits outweigh the probably [sic] risk.”
The spokesperson would not comment further on the possibility of general approval for the use of Jynneos in children.
Because Jynneos is licensed, not just authorized under an emergency use authorization like initial COVID vaccines were, it can be used “off label”—for instance, given to children who have been exposed, Brugler Yonts said.
Researchers “will certainly want to collect safety and, if possible, immunogenicity data on these kids and follow them closely, since there is no pre-existing data for use in the pediatric population,” she said. “But Jynneos is safe, and if this can prevent a larger outbreak in the pediatric population—and of course the adults that care for them and live with them—that is very important.”
The decision to provide the vaccine to children is “worth the potential risk,” she added.
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Illinois daycare worker tests positive for monkeypox, children and other staff potentially exposed
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Employees and children at an Illinois daycare center are being screened for monkeypox after an employee tested positive for the disease, health officials said.
The positive case at a daycare in Rantoul, Illinois, was the third case in Champaign County, prompting health care personnel to screen individuals at the facility who may have been exposed.
“An adult at a daycare center in the Rantoul area has tested positive for a case of monkeypox,” Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) Director Dr. Sameer Vohra said Friday. “Screenings of children and other staff are taking place now, and no additional cases have been found at this time.”
The Champaign-Urbana Public Health District (CUPHD) confirmed that no other positive cases had been discovered.
NEW YORK CITY, ILLINOIS DECLARE STATE OF EMERGENCY OVER MONKEYPOX
During a news conference Friday, CUPHD administrator Julie Pryde encouraged people to regularly wash their hands and offered a vaccine to those who believe they may have been exposed.
“Monkeypox is not airborne, it is primarily spread through close skin-to-skin contact. But it can also be spread by droplets during prolonged close contact and through contact with items that may have been contaminated such as towels or bedding,” Pryde said. “It’s a virus and viruses do not discriminate on who they affect.”
“It’s your usual things that we always say, and the main thing is you always washing your hands really well,” she added. “If someone has a case, and we know about them then we have very specific instructions on our website on how to isolate safely in the home with other people.”
BIDEN ADMINISTRATION DECLARES MONKEYPOX A PUBLIC HEALTH EMERGENCY
“We are doing anyone who has been exposed. So, that would be any of the children who were potentially exposed, any of the contacts, family, anyone who has potentially been exposed in this situation is being offered the vaccine,” Pryde also said.
On Thursday, the Biden administration declared the monkeypox outbreak a public health emergency.
“In light of evolving circumstances on the ground, I am declaring a public health emergency on #monkeypox,” Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra wrote in a tweet. “We are prepared to take our response to the next level in addressing this virus and we urge every American to take monkeypox seriously.”
Later that same day, President Joe Biden said he would be increasing vaccine distribution and expanding access to tests to detect the virus.
“I remain committed to our monkeypox response: ramping-up vaccine distribution, expanding testing, and educating at-risk communities,” he tweeted. “That’s why today’s public health emergency declaration on the virus is critical to confronting this outbreak with the urgency it warrants.”
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Monkeypox is a particularly rare disease that has infected more than 6,600 Americans. It can cause fever, body aches, chills, fatigue and pimple-like bumps on many parts of the body and is spread through prolonged skin-to-skin contact.
Illinois day-care worker tests positive for monkeypox, officials say, but no cases reported in children
“An adult at a day-care center in the Rantoul area has tested positive for a case of monkeypox,” department Director Dr. Sameer Vohra said at a news briefing. “Screening of children and other staff is taking place now.”
Officials did not say how many children might have been exposed to the virus. The worker is in isolation and is “doing well.” The day-care center has also been cleaned.
Vohra said the US Food and Drug Administration has made the monkeypox vaccine available for the children “without jumping through the normal hoops in this process,” so parents of children exposed to the virus can get their kids vaccinated.
“Pediatricians are on-site as we speak to screen children for cases, and there are mobile testing and vaccines for their families,” he said.
The day-care worker also works in home health care, and public health officials are in contact with an affected client.
Public health officials asked parents to let disease investigators contact them if their child is affected.
“If your child has had the potential of being exposed to this outbreak, you will receive a call from the Champaign-Urbana Public Health District. You do not need to call day-care centers. You do not need to call public health. You will be contacted,” said Julie Pryde, administrator of the district.
Monkeypox spreads primarily through extended skin-on-skin contact or through contact with contaminated items.
Some cases in the United States have been reported in women and children in the ongoing outbreak, but the virus has been predominantly found in gay and bisexual men and other men who have sex with men.
There are more than 7,500 probable or confirmed monkeypox cases in the United States as of Friday afternoon, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.