Martha Martin has to use up all of her remaining vacation days for the year to stay home with her infant son, and it still won’t be enough.
Nine-month-old Hal was recently exposed to measles at day care and can’t go back for almost a full month. He’s not had the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine, which isn’t recommended until age 1. When Martin has to return to work, her husband will need to take several unpaid days off to stay home with the boy.
“It just makes me so mad that this is happening,” said Martin, 26, of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. “It’s scary because my son is not protected, and I’m having to worry about child care and my job and my husband’s job.” In these situations, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends quarantine for 28 days.
Because he’s too young for the measles vaccine, Hal needed emergency shots of immunoglobulin, or IG, an antibody that helps the immune system fight off infections.
At this point, Martin said, “it’s just a waiting game.”
Her family’s worry and frustration are playing out in households nationwide as the number of measles cases has surpassed a level not seen since the highly contagious virus was declared eliminated in the U.S. in 2000.
On Wednesday, the CDC reported 1,309 cases of measles in 39 states. The vast majority of patients are children.
Each of those cases has had the opportunity to expose hundreds or even thousands of other people, especially kids, either too young to be vaccinated, like Hal, or children with weak immune systems, experts said.
Dr. Ana Montanez, a pediatrician at Texas Tech Physicians in Lubbock, Texas, cared for many families during the recent measles outbreak in West Texas.
“A lot of our families, hard-working families, typically don’t have a month’s savings of salary to stay home, yet they have to,” Montanez said. “Oftentimes it’s not just one job, but two, maybe three.”
Cedar Rapids isn’t experiencing an outbreak of measles. Just seven cases have been confirmed across Iowa in 2025, according to the latest data in the state. They are the first reported measles cases in Iowa since 2019.
Still, the Martin family’s situation illustrates the ripple effects of a single exposure.
“What’s happening in our town is a perfect example of why vaccination is important,” said Dr. Dustin Arnold, chief medical officer at UnityPoint Health-Cedar Rapids. “It just takes one” measles case, he said, to set off waves of impact.
On Saturday, Arnold ran a command center giving out immunoglobulin, or IG shots for eight babies who were exposed to measles at the same day care as Hal. Three others were sent to a nearby medical facility for the same treatment.
IG injections can be given up to six days after exposure to measles. A 2021 study found that the therapy is highly effective in protecting exposed newborns from getting sick.
IG treatments aren’t a permanent fix, said Dr. Tina Tan, president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America. Children “develop much higher levels of immunity from vaccination than from immunoglobulin,” she said.
The Cedar Rapids IG clinics, led by Arnold, were pulled together at the very last minute. The babies who got the injections had been exposed six days earlier, on Monday, July 7. Families were notified late Friday, July 11, and the treatments started the next morning.
“There are infants out there who have no protection, and we don’t want them to get sick,” Arnold said. “Measles can be mild, but it can also be life-threatening.”
The majority of measles patients have fared well despite their illness. Still, 13%, or 164 patients, needed to be hospitalized because of the infection.
Three people — including two young girls in Texas — have died of measles this year. This past week, a child in England died of the virus.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
