An Amtrak passenger arrived in Toledo on Sept. 13 from Chicago with a confirmed measles case, Lucas County health officials said. The Toledo-Lucas County Health Department launched contact tracing to find anyone who shared the train or station.
The passenger reached the Toledo station the night of Sept. 13, according to the health department. Investigators began interviewing the case and identifying close contacts who sat nearby or breathed the same air.
“We not only do an interview with the particular case, but we also search out for close contacts of that case, so if anyone was within the airspace of that individual or right next to that individual at the time that the individual was symptomatic and rash had started,” said Teresa Detano, an epidemiologist at the Toledo-Lucas County Health Department.
Detano said health staff asked every exposed person about vaccination status. Staff also recorded blood type, birth date, and past measles exposure.
Exposed people were sorted into two groups. One group, called passive monitoring, included those believed to have some immunity. The second group entered active monitoring.
“What we call active monitoring [is] literally reaching out to those individuals on a daily basis and we ask them, ‘Do you have any temperature? Do you have any symptoms, rash, runny nose, cough?'” Detano said. “Being actively monitored then we would quarantine them for 21 days.”
Some exposed people remain inside that 21-day window. Detano said a few Lucas County contacts are still under daily checks.
“There are a couple of cases in Lucas County right now that we are actively monitoring, but those individuals have not become symptomatic at this point in time,” Detano said. “We are actively monitoring some of those close contacts through October 5th.”
The Toledo-Lucas County Health Department is the local agency charged with tracking communicable disease in northwest Ohio. Measles spreads through coughing, sneezing, and shared indoor air, and symptoms include fever, rash, cough, and runny nose.
