Are Canada and the United States in the midst of a measles outbreak? That’s the question that some officials are mulling over after it was reported of another measles case. Again, the latest case is located in California.
A daycare center inside of a Southern California high school closed its doors Thursday and about a dozen infants have been placed under a three-week quarantine after it was discovered that a baby was diagnosed with the measles, according to CNN.
According to school district officials, the child is less than a year old and has yet to be vaccinated. The baby was enrolled in the daycare center of the Santa Monica High School. The infant room is now shutdown indefinitely soon after the diagnosis and 14 babies are now under a 21-day quarantine, which were the orders of health officials in the Los Angeles County.
“District staff are contacting parents of children in the Infant Toddler Program to share this information and ask them to monitor their children for potential symptoms of the measles,” Santa Monica-Malibu United School District Superintendent Sandra Lyon said in a letter issued to parents.
The toddler room was closed until Thursday and all children will now be required to show proof of immunization before they are permitted to return to the daycare facility.
Santa Monica High School recently had another case of the measles. Last month, a freshman baseball coach at the school was diagnosed with the measles. Gail Pinsker, spokesperson for the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District, confirmed to Reuters that the two cases are completely unrelated and the man had seen recovered from his illness.
Nevertheless, many residents in the community are concerned about this and now officials are encouraging families to get their children immunized.
“Unfortunately, the baby was contagious while in the child care center before a fever broke and a rash started and the parent was concerned,” said Pinsker in an interview with CBS News. “All the families that are impacted by the quarantine will be contacted by the public health department most likely even still today with information, support and direction regarding this quarantine.”
Measles used to be widespread throughout the U.S., but cases were nearly eliminated because of vaccines. However, in the past year, the nation had its most cases of measles since 2000 with 644, and in the past month there have been 102 reported cases over 14 states. The majority were situated in California with 92 new cases because of the Disneyland outbreak.
The illness is not fatal and it usually starts with a fever, runny nose, cough and sore throat. With that being said, one out of 20 children with measles also obtain pneumonia and one or two out of 1,000 children die, notes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Vaccines have been at the forefront of media reports in the last two weeks. Kentucky Republican Senator and possible 2016 presidential candidate Rand Paul was criticized for his remarks that somewhat lambasted vaccines and dismissed any suggestions that the federal government should force parents to vaccinate their children.
“I’ve heard of many tragic cases of walking, talking normal children who wound up with profound mental disorders after vaccines,” he said on CNBC. “I’m not arguing vaccines are a bad idea. I think they are a good thing. But I think the parent should have some input. The state doesn’t own your children. Parents own the children, and it is an issue of freedom.”
He later clarified his comments in a statement: “I did not say vaccines caused disorders, just that they were temporally related—I did not allege causation. I support vaccines, I receive them myself and I had all of my children vaccinated. In fact, today I received the booster shot for the vaccines I got when I went to Guatemala last year.”
Paul has also been attacked for the defense coming from Alex Jones, who lauded the GOP senator for his stance. Jones, the famous conspiracy theorist, said on his show this week: “Rachel Maddow, Obama, Fox News, Bill O’Reilly, all of them, attacking anybody that tells the truth. They’re just like, ‘There are no side effects, it’s totally safe, and it will protect you, you will not get the measles, if you get this shot.’ All pure bull. Doesn’t protect you. Can give you the measles — super dangerous.”