Authorities in Berlin said on Friday a spike in measles infections has been traced to unvaccinated refugees – but at least two measles cases appear to have come from the United States.

Dr Dirk Werber of Berlin’s state health office said one woman and possibly a child appeared to have contracted measles while travelling in the US.

Since 6 February, official US government figures showed that 121 people had been sickened by a recent measles outbreak in North America that has caused controversy over the anti-vaccination views held by some parents. The cases came from 17 states and Washington DC, a large number of them linked to an outbreak at the Disneyland amusement park in California.

On Wednesday, health officials in San Francisco said thousands of commuters using the Bart transport system could have been exposed to the disease by an infected employee of the tech firm LinkedIn.

Measles cases have also been reported in Canada and Mexico. The disease can be fatal.

Berlin has recorded 468 cases of measles this year, more than the rest of Germany had during all of 2014.



Dr Werber said a child asylum seeker from Bosnia was considered the index case because many subsequent infections among refugees were genetically identical.

Measles has since spread to Berlin’s non-refugee population, partly because immunisation rates among over-45s are low.