A mural of George Floyd is shown in the intersection of 38th St & Chicago Ave on March 31, 2021 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Community members continue preparations during the third day in the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who is charged with multiple counts of murder in the death of George Floyd. (Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images) WASHINGTON, DC - JULY 01: President Donald Trump's lawyer and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani talks to journalists outside the White House West Wing July 01, 2020 in Washington, DC. Giuliani did an on-camera interview with One America News Network's Chanel Rion before talking to other journalists about Vice President Joe Biden and the news that Russian intelligence may have paid Taliban operatives to kill U.S. troops in Afghanistan. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) ORLANDO, FLORIDA - FEBRUARY 28: Former President Donald Trump addresses the Conservative Political Action Conference held in the Hyatt Regency on February 28, 2021 in Orlando, Florida. Begun in 1974, CPAC brings together conservative organizations, activists, and world leaders to discuss issues important to them. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images) Here's what reported grand jury in Trump case may look like NEW YORK, NY - FEBRUARY 09: People walk past the Trump Tower as the impeachment trial of Donald Trump begins in Washington on February 09, 2021 in New York City. After listening to nearly four hours of legal arguments, the Senate has voted on Tuesday to move ahead with the impeachment trial of former President Trump. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images) Report: US companies may have benefited from forced labor of Uyghurs WASHINGTON, DC - MAY 20: U.S. President Joe Biden delivers remarks on the conflict in the Middle East from Cross- Hall of the White House on May 20, 2021 in Washington, DC. Israel and Hamas announced that they would agree to a cease-fire, which will take into effect on Friday, following days of fighting that claimed more than 200 lives. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images) SAN JOSE, CA - MAY 26: A view of the Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) light-rail yard where a mass shooting occurred on May 26, 2021 in San Jose, California. A VTA employee opened fire at the yard, with preliminary reports indicating nine people dead including the gunman. (Photo by Philip Pacheco/Getty Images) A healthcare worker prepares to administer a Pfizer/BioNTEch coronavirus disease (Covid-19) vaccine at The Michener Institute, in Toronto, Ontario on December 14, 2020. - Ontario, Canada's most populous province and one of the hardest hit by the pandemic, had 1,940 new cases and 23 deaths on Monday. The province is expected to give its next doses to nursing home workers as a priority, according to media reports. (Photo by CARLOS OSORIO / POOL / AFP) (Photo by CARLOS OSORIO/POOL/AFP via Getty Images) 'Never seen levels like this': Union president on airline passenger misconduct Memorial Day weekend will bring rain and cool air for much of the East Israeli youths wave their national flag as they take part in the "flag march" through Damascus Gate in Jerusalem's old city during celebrations for Jerusalem Day on May 17, 2015 which marks the anniversary of the "reunification" of the holy city after Israel captured the Arab eastern sector from Jordan during the 1967 Six-Day War. AFP PHOTO / JACK GUEZ (Photo credit should read JACK GUEZ/AFP/Getty Images) (CNN) — An Israeli flight attendant has slipped into a coma after contracting measles, according to health officials. The 43-year-old woman has encephalitis, or inflammation of the brain, a well-known and potentially deadly complication of the virus. She was otherwise healthy before getting measles. “She’s been in a deep coma for 10 days, and we’re now just hoping for the best,” said Dr. Itamar Grotto, associate director general of Israel’s Ministry of Health. The flight attendant, who works for El Al, the Israeli national airline, might have contracted the virus in New York, in Israel or on a flight between the two, Grotto said. Health authorities do not believed that she spread the virus to anyone on the flights. She’s unable to breathe on her own and on a respirator in the intensive care unit at Meir Medical Center in Kfar Saba, near Tel Aviv. She developed a fever on March 31 and entered the hospital that same day. Ongoing measles outbreaks in the United States and Israel started with parents who’ve chosen not to vaccinate their children, according to health authorities. Authorities believe that the flight attendant was vaccinated as a child, but the vaccine isn’t perfect, and in her case, it didn’t work. “I knew this was going to happen sooner or later,” said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University and an adviser to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on vaccines. “We have the reintroduction of a serious viral infection with a population that’s withholding the vaccine from their children, and now it’s spreading beyond that population.” One dose of vaccine not optimal Like many others of her generation around the world, the flight attendant, who has not been identified, received only one dose of the measles vaccine when she was a child. It wasn’t discovered until later that one dose is only about 93% effective. More recently – in the United States, starting in 1989 – children have been given two doses, which is about 97% effective, according to the CDC. It’s not known why most people who get measles recover fully while others have devastating complications. About 1 out of every 1,000 children who gets measles will develop encephalitis, according to the CDC. This can lead to convulsions and leave a child deaf or with an intellectual disability. Additionally, 1 or 2 out of 1,000 US children who get measles will die from it. Worldwide, the illness is fatal in 1 or 2 out of every 100 children. No fatalities have been reported in the United States from measles this year or last year. In Israel, a toddler and an elderly woman died last year of the disease. In the European Union, 35 people died of the disease in 2018, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. Measles in Israel There have been 3,920 cases of measles in Israel from March 2018 through April 11, said Grotto, who is also a professor of epidemiology and public health at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. In the United States, there have been fewer than 1,000 cases in about the same time period. In Europe, there were 34,383 cases of measles based on data reported to the World Health Organization from April of last year to April of this year. Ukraine had the highest number of cases in the past 12 months, with more than 72,000, followed by Madagascar and India with more than 69,000 and 60,000 cases, respectively. WHO warned that there are delays in reporting and that this data may be incomplete. Sean Gallup/Getty Images Ultra-Orthodox Jews, many from Israel, gathered in Uman, Ukraine in September on a religious pilgramage. Ukraine had more than 72,000 cases of measles last year. Grotto said there was a surge of cases in Israel last fall when large numbers of ultra-Orthodox Israelis traveled to Ukraine on a religious pilgrimage during the Jewish New Year. Ukraine has had more than 72,000 measles cases this year, more than any other country, according to the World Health Organization. About 85% to 90% of Israeli measles cases have been among ultra-Orthodox Jews, Grotto said. There’s nothing in Judaism that teaches against vaccination; on the contrary, rabbis encourage vaccination in keeping with Jewish teachings on protecting your health and the health of others. Get CNN Health's weekly newsletter Sign up here to get The Results Are In with Dr. Sanjay Gupta every Tuesday from the CNN Health team. Ultra-Orthodox Jews tend to have large families, and Grotto said those who don’t vaccinate tend to have practical, not ideological, reasons. “Sometimes, they vaccinate their first or second child, but with so many children, they don’t always have time to vaccinate them all,” he said. “They’re not against vaccines. They have nothing against them ideologically.” To turn the tide in the outbreak, Israeli public health authorities have increased vaccine clinic hours, opened mobile clinics in religious neighborhoods and taken out ads in newspapers in religious communities.<doc-sep>A flight attendant for El Al, the Israeli national airline, is comatose after becoming ill with the measles on a flight from New York City to Tel Aviv, according to the Israeli Ministry of Health. The woman, 43, is suffering from the measles-related complication of encephalitis, or swelling of the brain, according to Eyal Basson, a spokesman for the Israeli Ministry of Health. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the condition affects one out of every 1,000 people who get the measles virus, but is more common in children younger than 5 and adults older than 20. It can cause permanent brain damage, deafness or death. Israeli health officials warned people who were on board El Al flight 002 — which left John F. Kennedy Airport in New York City on March 26 and landed in Israel a day later — to seek medical care if they developed a fever, often the first sign of the highly contagious disease. Symptoms, which may also include a runny nose, cough, bloodshot eyes, sensitivity to light and a dark red rash, usually appear between 10 to 14 days following exposure to measles, with a possible range of 6 to 21 days.<doc-sep>
A flight attendant has died months after Israeli health officials said she contracted measles in New York, Israel or a flight between the two locations. The Times of Israel reports that 43-year-old El Al Airlines flight attendant Rotem Amitai had worked a flight from New York City’s JFK Airport to Tel Aviv just days before she was hospitalized for measles. Her condition worsened over time and she developed encephalitis, or brain inflammation, according to CNN. “Rotem was a wonderful person and a dedicated mother,” her family said in a statement provided to the Times of Israel. Amitai reportedly had been vaccinated against measles as a child but only received one dose. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has since 1989 recommended that all children get two doses of the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine, since doing so provides 97% effective protection against the measles virus. One dose of the MMR vaccine is 93% effective against measles, according to the CDC. Amitai’s case, the third measles-related death among Israeli citizens this year, illustrates the possible severity of the measles virus. Although it typically results in relatively minor symptoms such as fever, cough, runny nose and rash, the contagious virus can lead to life-threatening complications such as encephalitis. In 2017 alone, 110,000 people died from measles, the World Health Organization estimates. More than 364,000 measles cases have been reported by the WHO this year. Amitai’s is the third death No one in the U.S. has died from measles since 2015, but outbreaks across the country have raised alarm among health officials. With almost 1,200 cases of measles confirmed so far this year, the U.S. has seen its highest number of diagnoses in 25 years. Write to Jamie Ducharme at jamie.ducharme@time.com.