We have had the pleasure of meeting with managers and operators from South Carolina and nearby areas with measles outbreaks from across our client base over the past week or two. These four fantastic questions come directly from them.
Measles isn’t foodborne or even spread through physical touch, but it’s airborne. It lingers in the air for up to 3 hours after someone infectious breathes in a room. Some health departments will use 2.5 hours, but most use 3 hours as a general rule for calculating exposure time. So if a guest visited your business for about 15 minutes, you can expect the health department to announce an exposure window of 3 hours and 15 minutes.
Health departments tend to move quickly - and with good clinical reason. If someone is unvaccinated and exposed to measles, they can get the vaccine within 72 hours of exposure and drastically slash their chances of getting the virus. The downside to that is health departments will move very fast. They often will tell you that you’re on the list of exposure sites at the same time as they publish it. The good news is that we really aren’t seeing any public backlash or decreased revenue at businesses that are named.
Your standard cleaning routine for norovirus, or even COVID, should work. In the immediate aftermath, focus on ventilation (open windows, turn your HVAC system on high), because we’re more worried about what’s in the air than what’s on the surfaces. Your standard noro-approved cleaner will work for cleaning, and focus on high-touch areas like door handles, bathrooms, and faucets. There’s no need to hire special cleaners, fog, or do much more. After a few hours and one good standard clean and disinfection, the air in your building will be exchanged and the risk will be gone.
Most adults in the U.S. are fully vaccinated against measles with two doses of the MMR vaccine, which has been required for child care and public school in most states for decades. Lately, though, exemptions have been on the rise. In South Carolina, for example, where a major outbreak is still ongoing, the rate of religious exemptions for school vaccinations has quadrupled in the past decade. So, the largest group of people who are unvaccinated are kids and teens, but that group can also include unvaccinated adults, babies under 12 months, and immunocompromised adults who can’t get vaccines. About 90% of people who have gotten measles so far in 2025 and 2026 are kids and teens. In practice, this means that you are more likely to have a measles exposure from a guest than you are to have a measles positive employee, but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen!
Sources: ZHH, Mayo Clinic, Spectrum News, The State
We don’t often use op-eds as the best read, but we really appreciated the nuance that Dr. Elisabeth Marnik brings to this conversation, having grown up unvaccinated by a mom who loved her and had her best interests at heart. Nothing is black and white, and this is also a great reminder that shame doesn’t work to change people’s minds.