The respiratory viral infection, although thought eliminated in the U.S. in 2000, has reemerged, especially among unvaccinated individuals. As of early April 2025, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has reported more than 600 confirmed cases of measles.

Measles is extremely contagious

"The key to measles is how highly infectious it is. Each person that has measles will infect between 12 and 18 people in an unvaccinated situation," says Doug Kasper, MD, an infectious disease specialist with OSF HealthCare. "The key for controlling measles is widespread vaccine use."

For reference, each influenza patient, on average, will infect one to two others.

The measles vaccine is normally offered once a child has reached one year of age. It's a two-shot series, which came on the market in 1963. Dr. Kasper says this gives medical experts decades of data that show a correlation between people receiving the vaccine, and close to zero circulation of the virus in the United States.

The states with measles outbreaks are in unvaccinated people, and no breakthrough cases (in those who have received the vaccine) have been reported, Dr. Kasper adds.

The long-term risks for unvaccinated measles patients 

"There is emerging information that vaccination not only protects an individual from not becoming ill or having less severity of illness with a viral exposure, whether that's measles, chicken pox, influenza or COVID-19, but that there are long-term risks from viral infections that we do not appreciate in the moment," Dr. Kasper says. "Some of these have been associated with memory loss or dementia as somebody ages. Some of these are associated with organ disease like hepatitis or kidney disease."

Subacute Sclerosing Panencephalitis (SSPE)

SSPE is a rare, deadly degenerative disease of the central nervous system that can happen seven to 10 years after a measles infection. Young children, pregnant women and immunocompromised people are the most at-risk for SSPE. One to three out of every 1,000 children who become infected with measles will die from respiratory and neurologic complications, the CDC says.

SSPE symptoms happen over four stages.

-          Stage 1: Personality changes, mood swings or depression. There may also be fever and headaches, this stage can last up to six months

-          Stage 2: Muscle spasms and uncontrolled movement problems. Loss of vision, dementia and seizures can occur

-          Stage 3: Twisting movements and rigidity. Sometimes death

-          Stage 4: Serious brain damage, including areas of the brain that control breathing, heart rate and blood pressure, leading to coma and death

Immune amnesia

Another long-term impact of measles is known as immune amnesia. The American Society for Microbiology (ASM) calls immune amnesia “one of the most unique and most dangerous features of measles pathogenesis.” The extremely rare condition causes people’s immune systems to “forget” how to fight off infections and makes the person more susceptible. The ASM determined it normally takes two to three years after a measles infection for protective immunity to return.

A measles outbreak was declared in Northeast Illinois in early 2024 and declared “over” by the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) in June. The expectation of statewide health experts is that measles will return to Illinois in the coming months. This is mainly due to heavy travel through Chicago airports and summer festivals. County health departments have now been tasked with keeping an eye on their measles vaccine rates and identifying areas where vaccine rates are low. 

Peoria County's measles vaccine rate is quite high, around 95%. But outlying communities in central Illinois have lower vaccine rates, normally more rural counties. Health experts at Michigan Medicine call the Great Lake State “ripe for a measles outbreak,” as only 66% of toddlers receive the recommended childhood immunizations.

Measles symptoms 

"Measles typically presents with a high fever, typically much higher than what we'd see with seasonal colds or influenza. Fevers can be 104 or 105 degrees Fahrenheit," Dr. Kasper says. "That's followed by a runny nose and a characteristic rash. This typically develops on the head and then spreads down the rest of the body."

“We don’t want to go back”

"Measles at its peak, in the 1950s before the vaccine, led to a significant number of hospitalizations in young children. Around 50,000 hospitalizations were estimated per year and about 500 deaths," Dr. Kasper says. "We don't want to go back to that scenario in any capacity, where we have a large number of unvaccinated people. The outcomes could be too severe." 

Immunocompromised people like those who have received an organ transplant, cancer patients or those on long-term therapies that could impact their immune system, are at high risk for measles. 

Why vaccines are so important right now

Summer travel along with large crowds at places like airports and theme parks, will likely bring more measles cases to the United States. 

"This time, as good as any time, is to make sure somebody is updated on their vaccinations. If somebody isn't sure if they were vaccinated as a child, they should talk to their primary care provider about testing or receiving the vaccine. If someone is immunocompromised and they might be at a higher risk for measles through travel in areas that have exposure, they should talk to their primary care provider about the vaccine," Dr. Kasper says. "If someone has young children or is at an age where vaccine is recommended, we wholly recommend for them to discuss with their provider to remain up to date on their vaccine series."

Vaccine hesitancy continues to be a topic of discussion, one that Dr. Kasper recommends patients openly discuss with their medical provider. 

Natural immunity is not a viable option with measles. The highly infectious nature of the virus, along with the severity of symptoms and potential for long-term complications, make it an illness people need to try and avoid entirely. 

To choose a primary care provider, visit the OSF HealthCare website.

Video Interview Clips

Flu remains the dominant virus

“We're seeing a lot of patients be positive with the flu. It makes you feel really bad with headache, body aches, chills, cough and fevers to name a few,” says Sarah Overton, chief nursing officer of OSF Medical Group, Home Care and Employee Health. “But we're also seeing some COVID-19 and RSV. RSV attacks very young children and older adults."

All the viruses spiking at the same time have been "somewhat crippling" for healthcare providers, Overton says OSF HealthCare hospitals are seeing high inpatients counts, with many people coming in sick with respiratory illnesses through the emergency department.

Across Illinois, nearly 20% of emergency department visits were for acute respiratory illness, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH). 7.8% of those visits are attributed to patients with the flu.

"From Chicago and Rockford down to Alton, we're seeing a large number of respiratory illnesses. And I think the country is seeing it overall," Overton says. "The SIREN notifications from the IDPH show that other health systems in Illinois, not just OSF, are seeing this."

Illinois’ respiratory activity level, calculated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) moved up to High in late December, dipped to Moderate in January, and has now returned to High to start February.

“These viruses can kill”

The IDPH has reported five flu deaths this respiratory illness season. Along with three people dying from RSV, and one person dying from RSV and COVID-19.

"There's a little bit of complacency or feeling like the COVID-19 pandemic is done. But these viruses can kill, and they can lead to major medical complications and hospital admissions. I've talked to some of my colleagues who are the nursing leaders in the hospitals, and patients coming in are indeed sick. If you can manage at home, we recommend you do so," Overton says. 

For those who are immunocompromised or chronically ill, Overton says you should consult with a medical professional in person if you are sick, but if you’re a fairly healthy individual who is mildly ill, consider staying home and rest. OSF Medical Group and OSF OnCall offer Urgent Care services for many outpatient appointments, including visits with primary care providers and specialists.

For those caring for themselves at home, there are several over-the-counter medications to help alleviate symptoms. Additionally, a health care provider may prescribe antiviral medication.

“Antiviral medication is most effective is initiated less than 48 hours after your symptoms begin,” says IDPH Director Dr. Sameer Vohra.

Flu vaccine rates down

"We've got ample flu vaccine. We are behind our influenza vaccine rates of where we've been in years past," Overton says. "It's not too late to get your flu shot, it's not too late to get your pneumonia shot. If you get it at a retail pharmacy, that's great. You can also get it at OSF or another healthcare provider. We just want you to get vaccinated.”

Flu vaccines are offered at OSF primary care and many medical specialty offices, along with commercial pharmacies. The CDC’s Flu Vaccine Finder allows you to type in your zip code and find options closest to you. Overton also recommends speaking with your healthcare provider about the recently-approved RSV vaccine available for some.

Respiratory illnesses impacting care teams

"Unfortunately, we have had some experiences with respiratory illnesses in our staff," Overton says. "We need to do everything we can to protect them. OSF Mission Partners (employees) have started masking in those areas we know exposure is likely." Respiratory cough stations with hand sanitizer, tissues and masks are available at all OSF facilities.

How health systems being overloaded impacts patients

"When we overwhelm the health system, it could lead to delays in other critical illnesses that need to come to the emergency room or urgent care to receive adequate management," Overton says.

To protect yourself and others, Overton recommends regularly washing and sanitizing your hands. Also make sure to cover your cough to decrease the spread of respiratory droplets, which is a major way the flu and other respiratory illnesses spread.

When to head to the emergency department

“Those hallmark signs of when to see care is when a fever isn't responding to medications after 24-48 hours. Or when you’re extremely uncomfortable and experiencing respiratory impacts like shortness of breath that you are struggling to breathe,” Overton says.

Warning signs look different for kids and adults. The CDC breaks down symptoms to keep a close eye on:

In children

• Fast breathing or trouble breathing
• Bluish lips or face
• Ribs pulling in with each breath
• Chest pain
• Severe muscle pain (child refuses to walk)
• Dehydration (no urine for 8 hours, dry mouth, no tears when crying)
• Not alert or interacting when awake
• Seizures
• Fever above 104 degrees Fahrenheit that is not controlled by fever-reducing medicine
• In children younger than 12 weeks, any fever
• Fever or cough that improve but then return or worsen
• Worsening of chronic medical conditions

In adults

• Difficulty breathing or shortness of breath
• Persistent pain or pressure in the chest or abdomen
• Persistent dizziness, confusion, inability to arouse
• Seizures
• Not urinating
• Severe muscle pain
• Severe weakness or unsteadiness
• Fever or cough that improve but then return or worsen

Video Interview Clips

Now health professionals are warning the public about a number of health concerns that can come with sitting on the toilet too long and scrolling on your cell phone. 

Many people have gotten into the habit of taking their phone into the bathroom with them and scrolling TikTok or Instagram while they do their business. 

Kaylin Heinz, an infection preventionist registered nurse at OSF HealthCare, recommends making the mental decision to not even take your phone with you. 

A simple flush doesn't get rid of the nastiness that is common in the restroom. Especially with bathrooms that have showers and bathtubs in them. 

The moisture in the room can lead to bacteria, fungi and virus growth, not just inside the toilet, but on all bathroom surfaces. 

Heinz calls these a “breeding ground” for germs. 

“With sitting and scrolling, you're sitting there for long periods. Your hands are probably dirty before you go to the bathroom, because you're typically not washing your hands before you go to the bathroom. Then when you're sitting on the toilet, you're probably setting your phone down on a surface area that has germs," Heinz says. "Then you'll wash your hands, which you'll typically think your hands are clean, but they're not. Then you wash your hands and pick up the phone that was on the surface with germs, and now your hands are dirty again. And you're picking up the germs, taking them elsewhere, and spreading them to other people.”

Does your toothbrush hang out on the bathroom counter? You might want to rethink that. 

Heinz says if it's not put away safely, it likely has fecal matter on it. 

Another tip, she says, is to close the lid before flushing. It helps keep the germs inside and not aerosolize across the room.

Health Highlights Video Version With Chyrons

Health Highlights Video Version Without Chyrons

Parental instincts and quick reaction time led to two central Illinois parents saving their child’s life.

It started at home when the parents noticed something was extremely wrong with their 2-year-old son. They performed CPR and resuscitated him. He was transported to OSF HealthCare Children’s Hospital of Illinois in Peoria where it was determined he had suffered sudden cardiac arrest and had a malignant heart condition known as Brugada syndrome.

What is Brugada syndrome?

Brugada syndrome is a rare genetic disorder that causes heart arrhythmias and sudden cardiac death.

“Most kids that go through that, unfortunately, don’t survive,” says Harma Turbendian, MD, a pediatric cardiac surgeon with OSF Children’s Hospital of Illinois. “So, this was fast-acting parents who knew what they were doing, then EMS, followed by our team here in the ICU.”

Meet the team

The medical team at OSF Children’s Hospital who treated the toddler was led by Sunita Ferns, MD, the director of Pediatric and Adult Congenital Electrophysiology, Mark Plunkett, MD, the chief of Pediatric and Congenital Heart Surgery, and Dr. Turbendian, who was the primary surgeon in the procedure.

OSF HealthCare surgical teams have been using a device known as the EV-ICD, or extravascular implantable cardioverter-defibrillator, made by Medtronic, since spring 2024. But the new technology had only ever been used on adults or much older teenagers. The purpose of the device is that if or when a malignant heart arrhythmia occurs in the person, it will shock the heart back into rhythm.

By analyzing the 2-year-old’s response to a trial of antiarrhythmic medications in the ICU and incorporating insights from his preliminary genetic results, Dr. Ferns made the diagnosis of Brugada syndrome and brought together a team of specialists.

“We needed buy-in to trial a new device for the first time ever in a patient his size from the surgeons and good technical support. Medtronic was excellent. We called our field engineers and had a whole team here,” Dr. Ferns says.

Time to start the procedure

Sudden cardiac arrest is quite rare in kids, only happening in approximately one out of 100,000 children each year. However, the survival rate after one of these events is very low as well, with only 5% of pediatric patients surviving an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.

Dr. Turbendian explains how the device is inserted.

"They're fairly small incisions that are required for implantation of the device. You actually don't have to access the heart in order to place this thing," Dr. Turbendian says. "You can make a small incision under the breastbone and one part of the device just slides through that small incision to sit under the sternum."

The possibility of implanting an EV-ICD takes away the need for open heart surgery to select patients.

Traditionally, a transvenous pacemaker has been used for older kids and adults. It was determined by Dr. Ferns and her team that the transvenous device was too large for the 2-year-old patient, and the EV-ICD was the better option. The EV-ICD incisions are much smaller, making this the more minimally invasive option.

"The lead was inserted, and the device was implanted outside of his rib cage," Dr. Ferns says. "Given that a 2-year-old is going to grow leaps and bounds over the next decade or two, it's an excellent choice for him. When we tried this, it was the first time in the world that someone trialed it on someone this small.”

Dr. Plunkett calls the device a game changer. One that will send shock waves across the globe in the world of medicine.

“Children in the past had to undergo much larger procedures, oftentimes a sternotomy or thoracotomy. The devices were often bigger, and we were sewing patches on the heart or implanting coils," Dr. Plunkett says. "And some of those devices were not as effective as this new technology." 

History-making procedure

"It’s the first of its kind. This implantation is the smallest and youngest child ever to have this device," Dr. Plunkett says. "So that has expanded its application and market in a huge way. Its design initially was for adults or adult-sized patients. The fact we've proven it to be effective and safely implantable in a child this size really expands its application immensely."

Dr. Ferns agrees, hoping the team’s work will get published soon, which helps medical centers across the world learn when and how to perform this procedure.

"It tells the world that we can now use (the EV-ICD) in a smaller child. That's how a lot of pediatric implants or newer technologies happen. It's one or two centers that do it and they publish their results," Dr. Ferns says. "We expect that to be published shortly. There are kids all around the world who sustain cardiac arrests, and they now have this option." 

EV-ICDs are just a “safety net”

“We don't want it to keep shocking a child, because that's no way to grow up. To keep worrying about when your next shock is going to happen," Dr. Ferns says. "So, we monitor these devices constantly. If we see any arrhythmias in the background, despite the medication he's on, we are able to offer him other technologies. Ablative technologies can help modify the substrate, which is the tissue that's responsible for the bad rhythm.” 

Dr. Ferns is in charge of the child’s post-surgery care moving forward. She says Quinidine, a drug that was initially made to treat malaria and now treats irregular heart arrhythmias, was the perfect match for the patient’s condition.

“He has responded exceptionally well to this treatment,” Dr. Ferns adds.

This decision was made after the child’s EV-ICD did its job and went off while at home. His parents had to bring him back to the team at OSF HealthCare, who then had to ensure everything was meshing correctly.

While Dr. Ferns says the patient will forever be “married” to cardiology, she’s confident in the techniques and technology the Electrophysiology (EP) Lab at OSF HealthCare Saint Francis Medical Center has to treat these patients. The EP Lab manages arrhythmias from unborn fetuses all the way to patients in their 70s with complex congenital heart disease. Technology like contact force sensing and high-density mapping are available, along with many other resources.

If the patient’s symptoms were to worsen as time goes on, Dr. Ferns and her team in the EP Lab have the ability to perform ablations which target any abnormal heart tissue causing the arrhythmia, suppressing the abnormal electrical focus.

The generator of the device is in the axillary region, or the armpit. So as the child gets older and bigger, the strain sometimes found on conventional epicardial leads as a child gets taller is eliminated. The battery of the ICD should last 10-12 years.

Saving the patient’s life started at home

All three doctors say they can’t overemphasize the importance of the parents’ actions at home.

“When we look at the magnitude of this, first we have to go back to the fact this child survived an arrest at home, was successfully resuscitated, was neurologically intact and presented to our hospital," Dr. Plunkett says. 

This leads Dr. Ferns to say learning CPR is one of the most important things someone can do. Especially as kids enter middle and high school age and are involved with high intensity sports.

Another benefit of an EV-ICD is that if/when a patient experiences an arrhythmia, it will notify the congenital heart team in the EP Device Clinic.

"Most arrhythmia syndromes tend to happen at higher levels of activity. Many abnormalities can be detected by a simple noninvasive test such as an electrocardiogram (ECG)," Dr. Ferns says. "Universal screening is not yet common in the United States, but it is a part of the health care system in many European countries." 

Strong family history is a sign to get checked out

Strong family history of sudden cardiac arrest or heart disease is a sign to get seen by a cardiologist. Dr. Ferns recommends starting off with an ECG which she advises doing before kids participate in high intensity athletics. 

To learn more about the Electrophysiology Lab at OSF Saint Francis Medical Center, visit the OSF HealthCare website.

Dr. Sunita Ferns Video Interview Clips

Dr. Mark Plunkett Video Interview Clips

Dr. Harma Turbendian Video Interview Clips