As the government embarks on a nationwide measles vaccination campaign to tackle SA’s worst outbreak in more than a decade, the number of cases has climbed past 600, the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) reported lasted week.

The outbreak has been fuelled by the disruption to routine childhood vaccination programmes caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Yet many of the cases are among older children and young teenagers, which indicates gaps in SA’s immunisation coverage before Covid-19 struck, says NICD specialist pathologist Kerrigan McCarthy...

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