Laboratory tests came back positive for 27 children suspected of contracting measles, with 45 more children who developed symptoms awaiting their results. This was confirmed to IPN by a spokesperson of the National Public Health Agency, which promised to reveal more details at a briefing tomorrow.

Earlier this month it was reported that a group of children in southern Moldova caught the highly contagious, yet perfectly preventable childhood disease after visiting relatives in the Ukrainian town of Bolhrad near the border. Later they went together with their parents to a summer camp in Ungheni, about 230 km north, near the border with Romania.

The camp was organized by a religious community that rejects vaccination and obviously the greatest majority of the kids who got the disease hadn’t received any shot of the required two.

Since the fall of 2016, tens of fatalities caused by measles have been reported in the neighboring Ukraine and Romania, which struggle with low vaccination rates.