Recently, we had a sad case: the death was recorded of a child who was not vaccinated against measles and who also had concomitant diseases. Svetlana Grigoryan, head of the Department of Immunization and Vaccine-Preventable Diseases of the National Center for Disease Control and Prevention of Armenia, stated this at a press conference Friday.

"Armenia has been considered a measles-eliminated country since 2007; that is, no local cases of measles are recorded in Armenia, we do not have local circulation of the virus. And that's thanks to vaccinations, as vaccinations have a fairly high coverage. However, every year we have cases brought from elsewhere that cause some local outbreaks. Mostly unvaccinated and incompletely vaccinated people get sick. This year's outbreak is also due to a case brought from elsewhere. As a result of that outbreak, we already have 471 confirmed cases, 93 percent of which are unvaccinated and incompletely vaccinated people. About 70 percent of the sick are children. We have four people hospitalized, whose condition is moderate," said Grigoryan.

She added that the contagiousness of measles is quite high; accordingly, if ten people who are not vaccinated against measles nor had this disease before come into contact with a person who has measles, then nine of them can catch it.