Measles Outbreak

The Ministry of Health held a press conference in Apia late Wednesday and RNZ Pacific's correspondent, who attended the conference, said if lab results sent on to Melbourne are positive, for even one measles case, an outbreak would be declared.

Autagavaia Tipi Autagavaia said the suspected case related to an Aucklander who travelled to Samoa for a conference at the end of August, flew back to Auckland and was then diagnosed with the viral illness.

From 1 January 2019 to 9 September 2019 there have been 1131 confirmed cases of measles notified across New Zealand - 944 of these confirmed cases are in the Auckland region.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said the New Zealand government is continuing to give very strong advice to everyone to get immunised.

Leausa said reports from New Zealand of a passenger who arrived in Auckland last month carrying the symptoms of measles was a returning resident who attended the Methodist annual conference held in Samoa in July.

He claims the New Zealand media created the impression there was a measles outbreak in Samoa.

"And then you start talking about the defects in our immunisation because of the hesitancy of the people and how we are doing our coverage. And the more we talk about that we forget about the main subject, which is the outbreak in New Zealand.

Auckland is at the centre of the outbreak with hundreds more cases than the rest of the country combined

The Auckland Regional Public Health Service said the number was 143 higher than this time last week.

It was warning Auckland schools to take serious precautions if they were participating in the many sports tournaments due to start around the country next week.

Anyone with symptoms of measles, including a cough or runny nose, should not be included in teams, it said.

Auckland Regional Public Health Service (ARPHS) advised anyone on Air New Zealand flight NZ997 on August 19 to be extra vigilant, especially if they were not vaccinated.

The infected person did not know they had measles at the time.

Public Health Medicine Specialist Dr Maria Poynter said symptoms could take between seven to 14 days to show.

" ... you are most at risk if you're not immune to measles, either because you haven't been vaccinated or you haven't had the disease previously," Poynter said.

New Zealand's Director of Public Health said a lot of people have close ties with the Pacific region and with school holidays approaching, many plan to travel.

Caroline McElnay said the Ministry is seeing a substantial number of measles cases in Auckland and wants to limit the outbreak.

In the past few months, around sixty children have died from the disease in the remote district where malnutrition cases are also soaring.

Since reports of the extent of outbreak filtered out of Papua earlier this month, Indonesia's government has moved quickly to attend to the situation, but is copping criticism for neglecting the health of Papuans over many years.

Papua's police commander, Boy Rafli Amar last week said the number affected by malnutrition had surpassed 10,000, which was exacerbating the measles problem.