Alberta Health Minister to provide measles update after more confirmed cases

After more measles cases were confirmed in Alberta, bringing the total to 210, Health Minister Adriana Lagrange will be providing an update on measles on Monday.

It happens at 9 a.m. and she will also be joined by the new interim Chief Medical Officer of Health, Dr. Sunil Sookram, who replaced former interim CMOH Dr. Mark Joffe, and is serving temporarily until a longer-term appointment is made.

This comes after Alberta Health Services (AHS) said on Friday there are 17 new cases, warning people who visited a few locations in Calgary and in Two Hills to watch for symptoms.

Of the 210 total, only 26 of them are considered active and could be transmitted to others. Most of the cases are in the Central Zone, while 121 cases are in Albertans between five and 17 years old.

This also comes as healthcare professionals have expressed publicly that LaGrange and the UCP government should be doing more to warn the public of the risks of measles. LaGrange had previously said there wasn’t a need for a public address.

Former CMOH Dr. James Talbot told CityNews in early April that the province is woefully ill-equipped to stamp out the spread of measles, stating that 30 per cent of Albertans aren’t immunized.

Alberta Medical Association president Dr. Shelley Duggan said the province should provide regular, weekly public briefings, seriously expand public messaging, and set up booster clinics in areas with low vaccination rates.

Joffe, the most recent CMOH, had been largely quiet until he released an update on measles in the province on April 11, encouraging Albertans to get vaccinated as the outbreaks are “highly preventable.” A week later, the province revealed that his contract wouldn’t be renewed and appointed Sookram at the helm.

He had an editorial published in Post Media about measles precautions just days later, and Joffe recently spoke at a University of Alberta Medical Grand Rounds about measles.

After the talk, an audience member asked Joffe what he would tell the Alberta government if it wanted his opinion. The former CMOH said he would show the entire presentation, but also said discussions were had on how to bring information to Albertans, particularly when a couple of cases of measles sprouted in Alberta in 2024.

But mainly, he said it’s important Albertans understand what measles is, and the government needs to be able to explain the vaccine and its purpose.

“We need to explain: What is this disease? What are we trying to prevent? What is this vaccine? And we also need to do it in a way that people will understand because we have a large portion of our population who are not reading the government website, they’re not following the social media — tweets — that our government is putting out, and we need to meet them and explain to them in their language and in a way that they can understand,” he said.

Measles symptoms include fever, coughing, a runny nose, red eyes and a blotchy, red rash that appears three to seven days after the fever starts.

According to Alberta Health Services, measles is an extremely contagious disease that can cause seizures, blindness, and brain damage. It also has a death rate of roughly two for every 1,000 infections.