At least 152 people in New York have been diagnosed with mumps since a boy who unknowingly carried the illness over from England exposed a Jewish summer camp in Sullivan County.
"The majority of those affected were vaccinated against mumps," says ACSH's Dr. Elizabeth Whelan. "The protection rate with the mumps vaccine is somewhere in the 75% to 95% range."
"The sad fact is that immunity from these shots wanes," says ACSH's Dr. Gilbert Ross. "That's why everyone should be vaccinated. Although it's not absolutely protective, vaccination does increase barriers to communicability of mumps, and if there's an epidemic, it reduces the number of people who will acquire it. 152 cases is a lot, but mumps is highly contagious and can have serious complications, so it's fortunate that it's not thousands of cases. I would say widespread vaccination has protected us from a far worse situation. This should be a wake up call that childhood diseases some of which can cause lethal complications have not vanished."
