Measles Exposure in California

Commuters and students in California may have been exposed to measles earlier this month, Californian health officials are reporting.

According Contra Costa County heath officials, a University of California, Berkeley student who commuted from Contra Costa Country each morning to get to school may have exposed his fellow commuters and students to measles.

It has been reported that the student likely picked up the measles virus during a recently trip overseas, and after returning home, likely began unwittingly exposing people to the respiratory disease between February 4 and February 7.

Measles is a dangerous respiratory disease caused by virus that causes a severe rash coupled with exhaustion, cough, watery eyes, and severe fever. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), measles is most dangerous in children, where one in 20 child infections result in pneumonia. About one in 1000 children with measles can get encephalitis, a dangerous swelling of the brain, and an estimated two children in every 1000 pediatric cases world-wide die of the disease, often because of inadequate access to treatment. The disease has also been known to make pregnant women have miscarriages or give birth prematurely.

Worse yet, the disease is highly infectious and spreads through sneezing and coughing alone. According to the CDC, people who share air with a measles victim are 90 percent likely to contract the disease if not vaccinated.

Thankfully, most U.S. citizens cannot get measles because the great majority of the country has been immunized. In fact, measles was declared eliminated entirely from the U.S. in 2000, so the disease no longer spreads year round.

Still, cases like this most recent one can still pop up. During last year alone, 159 unvaccinated people in the U.S. were reported to have contracted the virus. Nearly all cases, with the exception of a few anomalies, were found linked to recent international travel.

According to the CDC, the symptoms of measles generally begin about 7 to 14 days after a person is infected, so new cases of infection, if any, linked to this recent exposure will show themselves in the following week.