Chickenpox are hitting kids in Moniteau County extremely hard this month. In fact, health officials are calling the cases in Moniteau County an outbreak.

The Moniteau County Health Department started noticing a spike in the number of chickenpox cases in March, after reports from schools and day care centers started to pile up. Many Pre-School and Kindergarten students are not too young to know what chickenpox is.

"They're bumps that start in one place and they spread all over your body and they're red," said one boy at the Training Center Daycare in California.

These children have not had it because they've had the chickenpox vaccine. Moniteau County is seeing its largest chickenpox outbreak in several years. In the past 2 months, county schools and daycare centers reported eight cases of the disease. That accounts for more than 60 percent of reported cases in the past year.

"Chickenpox tends to crop up in clusters," said Regional Epidemiology Specialist Stefanie Stevens. "It just seems like this one is a bigger cluster than usual."

The Missouri Department of Health requires children to get one Varicella vaccine before the third grade, but the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends children get two doses.

Stevens says she hopes Moniteau County children get both doses of the vaccine to prevent a larger outbreak.

Due to the outbreak, the Moniteau County Health Department is offering free chickenpox vaccines for both children and adults. The department says pregnant women are at high risk of getting chickenpox as well.