Update, Thursday April 17, 3 p.m.:
The one-year-old Ingham County girl who was infected with measles is doing well, and her mild symptoms have fully resolved, a county health official said Thursday.
And so far, there are no new cases of measles in the county.
“There are a few people who have shown up at their doctors and have said they wanna be tested, but very few, I want to say probably three people,” Ingham County medical health officer Dr. Nike Shoyinka said on Thursday. “And they are not any known linked cases, certainly not any that I'm aware of that are from the school” that the infected child attended.
But there is a lot of misleading information that’s been floating around about this case in the last few days. Here’s what you should know.
Q: Was this some sort of “superspreader event” that exposed a lot of people to measles?
As of now, no, this isn’t a "superspreader" event. And we don’t really know how many people were actually exposed, or how susceptible they were to the virus.
Here’s what happened: a one-year-old Ingham County girl contracted measles at some point during an out-of-state trip in the past few weeks. (The timing and location of that initial exposure is still undetermined.)
Upon their return, the girl may have exposed members of the public to measles at several locations in East Lansing, Lansing, and Okemos, including a restaurant, a church, and Tractor Supply store. The county has released a list of locations and times the public can check here.
Measles is highly contagious and can spread quickly among people who aren’t vaccinated.
But the timing is important: the measles virus can remain infectious in the air and on surfaces for up to two hours after an infected person leaves the area, according to the CDC. So if you went to that same Tractor Supply store the day after this child, you weren’t exposed to measles by them.
That didn’t stop the Daily Mail from running a story earlier this week saying doctors were warning of this being a “superspreader event.” (The headline containing that description has since been changed.)
While that’s not a technical term, it generally applies to big public events or social gatherings where a single person infects an unusually high number of people, leading to an accelerated number of cases among other attendees.
Right now, that’s just not the case here - both because there aren’t any new cases linked to this infected individual so far, and because there’s nothing to indicate that measles is spreading any faster in this case than it has elsewhere.
“‘Superspreader’ is inaccurate, because when you describe ‘superspreader,’ you're trying to say that there's something about this particular case that made it spread faster,” Shoyinka said. “But in every case that we've seen across the country, in the over 700 cases that we have in the United States, the spread happens quickly, especially in places where we do not have herd immunity. When herd immunity is low it spreads way faster.”
Q: What about the daycare kids? Were they all exposed to measles?
The infected individual also attended a local daycare, and health officials say they have been in contact with all the families of the fifty or so students who attend that childcare center. That doesn’t mean all fifty kids were actually exposed, or that they’re all equally susceptible to the virus.
“Anyone…who is within that school, we have collected names and are matching their vaccination status,” Shoyinka said.
“If we have any individual who is appropriately vaccinated for their age - an adult who has received two vaccinations, or a child over the age of 4-6 who has received two vaccines, they are fully vaccinated,” she said. “And even though they've been exposed, we know that the vaccine is very efficient, 97% effective. And so they're not deemed susceptible, unless there's some other immunocompromised [factor] that we would be expecting.”
As of February, MMR vaccine coverage of children aged 19-35 months in Ingham County is 83.3%, “slightly above the state average, of 80%,” according to a county statement. “While this is encouraging, it remains below the threshold required for herd immunity.”
Q: If this kid got measles after being vaccinated, does that mean the vaccine isn’t really that effective?
No. This child received their first dose of the measles vaccine about 24-hours before their family flew on a plane for an out-of-state trip. Children usually receive their first dose of the measles vaccine between 12-15 months, and it takes a few weeks for the vaccine to offer full protection.
“This particular family did everything they were supposed to do,” Shoyinka said. “They did not vaccinate their baby because they were going on a trip. They vaccinated their child because it was time for the child to get vaccinated. It wasn't because they weren't thinking, ‘Oh, we're going somewhere where there's measles there,’ or whatever. They were just doing the right thing. This child is at the right age. It's time to get vaccinated. And they did that the day before the trip.”
While we don’t know exactly when the child was exposed to measles during that trip, it takes 2-3 weeks for the vaccine to fully work. But the child developed only mild symptoms, Shoyinka said, and was never hospitalized.
“And I would dare say that one of the reasons why, is because even though the immune system was not fully developed, it did offer some protection, if not complete in that case,” she said. “So that is why I would say that it is not an indication that the vaccine did not work. It is an indication that the vaccines did not have enough time to develop the immunity that is necessary to offer 100% full protection.”
Kids also need a second dose of the measles vaccine, which they usually received sometime between the ages of 4-6 years old.
Ingham County is holding a walk-in measles vaccine clinic next on April 22, from 3:00 pm – 7:00 pm at 5303 S. Cedar Street.
Original story, published Tuesday, April 15, 2025:
A one-year-old Ingham County girl is the fifth confirmed case of measles in Michigan, and may have exposed other children to the virus at a local childcare center, according to county health officials.
The county isn’t releasing the name of the daycare where exposure may have occurred, but the families of all fifty or so kids who attend have been contacted by the health department, said Ingham County medical health officer Nike Shoyinka, MD.
The childcare center was not listed as a public potential exposure site in the county’s press release on Monday, Dr. Shoyinka said, because they’ve been “very cooperative in terms of giving us a list of the students in the school, the staff, the people who have been there,” she said. “And so the information that we need in order to communicate with the people who are exposed, and provide them with the adequate information, is available.”
Health officials are still determining how many of the children at the center are unvaccinated. But as of February, MMR vaccine coverage of children aged 19-35 months in Ingham County is 83.3%, “slightly above the state average, of 80%,” according to the county statement. “While this is encouraging, it remains below the threshold required for herd immunity.”
“We are matching records with every single child and every single family” in the school, “to make sure that we can communicate with them what they need to do,” Dr. Shoyinka said. “If a child was unvaccinated, then we would monitor them for 21 days following the last date of exposure,” which was April 8.
The other potential exposure sites include a Tractor Supply in Lansing on April 4, an Aldi’s and a farmer’s market in Okemos on April 5, Towar Baptist Church (including the infant room) in East Lansing and Toscana Restaurant on in Lansing on April 6, and MSU Community Music School and the University of Michigan Health-Sparrow Lansing emergency department on April 8.
“Measles is a highly contagious, vaccine-preventable illness that spreads through airborne transmission and direct contact,” according to an Ingham County Health Department statement issued Tuesday. “To help protect the community, we strongly encourage all individuals aged 1 year and older to ensure they are up to date on the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine. The MMR vaccine is safe and effective, providing approximately 97% protection with two doses.”
Child received first vaccine the day before traveling out of state
The infected child also received her first dose of the measles vaccine the day before her family took her on a plane ride out of state, health officials said.
It’s not clear at what point in the trip the child was exposed to measles, but it takes a couple weeks for the body’s immune system to fully respond to the vaccine, Dr. Shoyinka said.
“So even though this child was vaccinated, she was still relatively susceptible given the short period of time."
“However," she said. "I will say that this child's symptoms were very mild…presumably because she had received at least one dose, even though it was just 24 hours before the plane ride.”
It’s not clear yet whether the child was at the Grand Rapids or Detroit airport, Dr. Shoyinka said.
Children need two doses of the Measles, Mumps and Rubella (MMR) vaccine in order to be fully immunized, and typically receive their first dose between 12-15 months and get the second dose between 4-6 years.
And infants traveling internationally should be fully vaccinated before traveling, according to the CDC.
(They can get the first dose of the MMR vaccine between 6-11 months, and then two more shots after their first birthday.)
Unvaccinated people who are exposed to measles may get some additional protection if they’re vaccinated within 72 hours of the exposure. They may also be given an immunoglobulin (IG) within six days of being exposed to measles, as a post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP).
For those exposed to measles, “there's a 90% chance of getting measles when you are not vaccinated at all,” Dr. Shoyinka said. “One in five children who contract measles could be hospitalized. One in 20 children could get pneumonia. And…there are about one to three children [who] could die out of 1,000 kids who contract measles. So it's really serious, but we do have things in place to address that, and that is the vaccine.”
The vaccine is available at the ICHD Immunization Clinic, located at 5303 S. Cedar Street in Lansing. Appointments can be made by calling 517-887-4316 or email Immunization@ingham.org.
