{"id":747885,"date":"2026-08-24T05:34:25","date_gmt":"2026-08-24T05:34:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/747885\/"},"modified":"2026-08-24T05:34:25","modified_gmt":"2026-08-24T05:34:25","slug":"measles-outbreak-in-worcestershire-exposes-hospital-vaccine-gaps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/747885\/","title":{"rendered":"Measles outbreak in Worcestershire exposes hospital vaccine gaps"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hundreds of front line NHS staff have received the MMR jab, following an “unprecedented” outbreak of measles at a Worcestershire hospital. <\/p>\n

In May, seven positive cases of the highly contagious disease were reported at Worcestershire Royal. <\/p>\n

Vulnerable patients – including a pregnant woman – required preventative medicine, while some unvaccinated staff had to isolate for 21 days.<\/p>\n

Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust said a review of 8,500 staff had revealed that more than a quarter in patient-facing roles had not been vaccinated or lacked natural immunity. More than 400 have now received the jab.<\/p>\n

The three-month measles, external<\/a> outbreak, which was declared over on 24 July, was described as “unprecedented” by the Worcestershire Acute’s quality governance committee.<\/p>\n

According to the hospital trust’s board papers for July, external<\/a>, the infections included two members of staff working on a higher risk ward.<\/p>\n

Three vulnerable hospital patients – a pregnant woman and two patients who had received organ transplants – received Human Normal Immunoglobulin, a preventative medicine containing antibodies to fight infection.<\/p>\n

Contact tracing was carried out to identify how many people may have been infected. The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) said cases were also identified in the community.<\/p>\n

At the time of the outbreak, Dame Julie Moore, a non-executive director at the trust, expressed concern about “the lack of a robust process” for checking the vaccination status of staff. <\/p>\n

July’s board papers detail how she also “raised the patient safety implications of unvaccinated clinical staff”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hundreds of front line NHS staff have received the MMR jab, following an “unprecedented” outbreak of measles at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":747886,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[102,2960,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-747885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/747885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=747885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/747885\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/747886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=747885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=747885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=747885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}