Measles a rising concern in Canada, following near-zero years during pandemic

There were almost zero measles cases in Canada during the pandemic, but as travel restrictions eased, the country started seeing infections again. With vaccination rates down, some health officials are concerned.

During the pandemic, measles rates dropped to almost zero cases per year in Canada. What went up, according to one infectious disease expert, was vaccine hesitancy.

There were only 12 measles cases in Canada in 2023, but this year there have already been 81. Rising cases and dwindling vaccination rates are cause for concern, said Dr. Susy Hota, the division head of infectious diseases and medical director of infection prevention and control at University Health Network in Toronto.

"A trend that we're noticing since the pandemic especially is that there's been an increase in hesitancy to get vaccines that we normally gave out through childhood," said Hota.

After widespread vaccination, measles was essentially eliminated in Canada by 1998, Hota told CTVNews.ca in an interview on Wednesday. Cases that do appear in Canada almost always originate from travel to another country — but as cases rise, that starts to change.

"You'll start to see other cases pop up here and there where you can't trace it directly back to travel," she said. "And that's what we want to avoid, because that gets really, really tricky when you have these sporadic cases that you didn't expect to occur."

Hota says the target should be at least 95 per cent of the public fully vaccinated against measles, which means one dose for young children and two doses for school-aged children.

In Canada, though, the numbers fall short. The latest available data from the 2021 childhood National Immunization Coverage Survey estimates 91.6 per cent of two-year-olds have their measles vaccine — but that number is only 79.2 per cent for seven-year-olds having both doses.