What the experts are saying about the measles outbreak

By Matt SmithThe Washington PostA rash of outbreaks has hit the West, with at least 14 people dead and hundreds more hospitalized in the United States and Canada.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced Monday that it had recorded nearly 5,600 cases of the disease, which is caused by a coronavirus that causes respiratory inflammation in the airways and can spread rapidly through the air.
It also announced that three new cases of measles were detected in the same area in Arizona, a state that has had a recent outbreak.
In the United Kingdom, there were 10 confirmed cases and more than 1,500 cases reported by the British Medical Association.
Officials in New Zealand reported five cases of coronaviruses and two deaths, while the New South Wales Department of Health reported one case of measles and one death.
A total of 6,904 cases of respiratory illnesses have been reported nationwide, according to the CDC.
“This is a new trend in the recent history of measles,” Dr. Gregory Hart, chief of the CDC’s Office of Surveillance and Laboratory Services, told reporters in Atlanta.
He said the new outbreaks could increase as more people who are exposed to the virus become ill.
There have been no deaths so far.
CDC officials in Atlanta confirmed on Sunday that two of the three people in the New York City area who tested positive for measles, which can be spread through direct contact with an infected person, were hospitalized.
The other two patients tested positive after having been exposed to an infected individual in New York.
Hart said more than 4,000 people have been vaccinated in the U.K., and that the number of cases was likely to increase because people are more likely to go to the hospital if they catch the virus in the short-term.
Health officials in the UK also said on Sunday they had confirmed the coronaviral cases in the borough of Newham in southwest London.
Newham is about an hour northeast of London and has a population of about 1,000.
Hart said it was unclear whether any of the Newham cases were the result of direct contact.
More: More than 40 percent of the U,S.
population has already been vaccinated against measles.