South Carolina on Friday reported 124 new measles cases in the last three days, bringing the total number to 558 in the state’s fast-growing outbreak. Cases have nearly doubled in the last week alone.

“We have right now the largest outbreak in the U.S., and it’s going to get worse before it gets better,” Dr. Helmut Albrecht, an infectious disease physician with Prisma Health and the University of South Carolina School of Medicine, said in a briefing Friday. Hundreds of people in other parts of the state are already in quarantine or isolation, he said.

The epicenter is in Spartanburg County, in the northwest part of the state.
The area has also seen a jump in students with nonmedical exemptions to required school vaccines since the pandemic. New research published this week in the journal JAMA finds these exemptions are growing in counties across the U.S. — making them vulnerable to outbreaks.

And concerns are growing that infections are spreading beyond the county. There have already been six cases in neighboring North Carolina linked to the Spartanburg outbreak.

“We have lost our ability to contain this with the immunity that we have,” Albrecht said, urging people to get vaccinated.

The vaccination rate among students in Spartanburg County is 90% overall, which is lower than the 95% threshold needed to prevent measles. Measles is one of the most contagious diseases. A single case can infect up to 18 other people on average.

 A fast-spreading outbreak

The South Carolina outbreak started in October, and has exploded in the last couple of weeks, with 248 new cases reported this week alone. Most are kids and teens who have not been vaccinated. Hundreds of children have been quarantined since it began, and exposures are happening in lots of public places, state epidemiologist Linda Bell said in a media briefing earlier this week.

“The settings of potential public exposures that have been newly identified in the last week include churches, restaurants, business, and many health care settings,” Bell said.

Bell warned that anyone who has not been vaccinated is vulnerable to infection.

Falling vaccination rates, rising exemptions

While 90% of students in Spartanburg County meet school vaccination requirements, if you dig deeper, you’ll find pockets with much lower vaccination rates. Bell said one school has a vaccination rate as low as 20%.

Spartanburg County also has a relatively high number of nonmedical exemptions from vaccines — about 8% of students have such an exemption, a jump from just 3% in 2020, according to data published alongside the new research in JAMA. These are parents opting out of the required school vaccines.

Tim Smith’s wife is an assistant teacher in Spartanburg County who despite being vaccinated, caught measles from one of her students and got so sick she had to go to the hospital. Smith told the district school board this week that exemptions in Spartanburg have gotten out of control.

“It’s absolute insanity,” Smith said. “She was totally dehydrated. We have laws on our books that require vaccinations. For some reason, somebody decided that you can apply for a religious exemption and anyone that applies for this can get it.”

And it’s not just religious exemptions; most states allow parents to get some form of nonmedical exemption to school vaccination requirements, either for philosophical or personal reasons or religious ones.

A growing trend nationwide

The new JAMA study found the rate of nonmedical exemptions has risen steadily in the majority of U.S. counties, and this trend has accelerated since the pandemic. The researchers examined exemption data from more than 3,000 U.S. counties and jurisdictions in 45 states plus the District of Columbia from 2010 to 2024.

In most states, even if the overall vaccination rate is high, there are pockets with higher rates of these nonmedical exemptions, says Dr. Nathan Lo, a physician-scientist with Stanford University and one of the study’s authors.

“When you think about infectious disease outbreaks, it only takes a really small pocket of under-vaccinated individuals to create and sustain an outbreak,” Lo says.

Higher exemptions tend to go hand in hand with lower vaccination rates, and there are a lot of communities vulnerable to potential outbreaks, says Michael Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy. He says all they need is one spark to ignite it.

“There are a lot more South Carolinas waiting to happen,” he says.

A South Carolina fugitive accused of killing his ex-girlfriend “execution-style” at her Queens home was ordered held without bail during a Thursday court appearance, where the mother of the slain 21-year-old said he showed “no remorse” for the tragic killing.

 De’Ovryion Elijha Ray, 23, was arraigned on second-degree murder and two counts of second-degree criminal possession of a weapon charges at Queens Supreme Criminal Court for fatally shooting his ex-girlfriend, Dashanna Donovan, on Sept. 12, Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz announced in a statement.

Ray pleaded not guilty to the “execution style” killing of Donovan, 21, and was ordered held without bail by Queens Supreme Court Justice Ushir Pandit-Durant, according to prosecutors and court records.

The alleged killer, who hails from Simpsonville, showed “no remorse” during the court hearing, Donovan’s mother, Helena Hypolite, who was inside the courtroom, told The Post.

“He showed no remorse, nothing. It just had me boiling, profusely angry,” Hypolite said.

The grieving mother said Ray exchanged fervent glances with her throughout the proceeding, and nodded to her when she stood up after he was brought into the courtroom.

“When they brought him in, I stood up and he looked at me and nodded. When they were taking him out, he looked at me and nodded again. To me, it’s like he was saying, ‘Now what?” Hypolite said..

“I was full of rage. My blood was boiling,” she added.

Ray was first arrested in South Carolina on Oct. 7 and extradited to New York to face murder charges, authorities said.

The accused murderer was tight-lipped and avoided eye contact as cops escorted him out of the 115th precinct in navy pants, red sneakers, a grey quarter-cip sweatshirt, and handcuffs before his arraignment.

Ray allegedly traveled by bus from Virginia Beach, Virginia to New York City on the day of Donovan’s murder. He then took a subway from Manhattan to Queens and approached Donovan’s East Elmhurst home on 96th Street by roughly 9 p.m., according to prosecutors.

Donovan was in her backyard when a motion light turned on in the alleyway. She looked down the alleyway and appeared to recognize the person walking toward her.

The 21-year-old — who moved to the Big Apple just six months before to escape an abusive relationship with Ray — then screamed and ran into her apartment.

Ray ran around the corner of the house while wielding a gun and pointed it in the direction of Donovan as he entered the home.

Police found her lying near the doorframe of her bathroom with gunshot wounds to her head and torso. She was pronounced dead at the scene.

After gunning down Donovan, Ray fled to Virginia Beach that same night, officials alleged.

“This was a calculated, cold-blooded murder of a young woman who was running for her life when she was gunned down,” DA Katz said in a statement.

“As alleged, the defendant traveled to New York, killed the victim and fled the state mere hours after the murder in a tragic case of domestic violence,” Katz added.

“Our thoughts are with the victim’s loved ones as we seek justice. My office worked hand in hand with South Carolina officials to ensure that the defendant was extradited to New York to face the indictment charges.”

If convicted, Ray faces up to 25 years to life in prison, prosecutors said.

He will return to court on March 6.

If you or someone you know is affected by any of the issues raised in this story, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1.800.799.SAFE (7233) or text START to 88788.