WATCH: There’s a new measles scare in Toronto bringing the number of confirmed cases to six. A daycare is now linked to the province’s outbreak and now there are fears the children may be at risk for this virus. Mike Drolet reports.
TORONTO – Toronto Public Health says four of the six confirmed measles cases in the city are related.
Public health officials have not determined the specific part of the city where the cases originated, saying only that some have clustered in the west end.
“We do have information that four of the six cases have what’s called the same genotype, so they’re probably all related even though they themselves don’t know each other,” Dr. Vinita Dubey, a doctor with Toronto Public Health said in an interview Monday.
She said testing of the cases determined they were from a strain called D4 – unrelated to the B3 strain found at Disneyland and responsible for nearly 114 cases.
Dubey said the D4 strain circulates in several parts of the world though none of the patients had travelled recently.
Six people have been diagnosed with measles since the public health agency declared an outbreak last week. Only one of the patients was fully vaccinated.
The measles vaccine requires two shots – one at 12 months of age and another between four and six years of age.
Dubey said the public health agency’s current hypothesis is that someone brought the strain to Toronto and consequently infected the four people.
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