Law fails to halt measles outbreak
20 people have been infected
LOS ANGELES — Six months after California’s strict vaccine law took effect, a measles outbreak has infected 20 people, most of them in Los Angeles County, prompting a search for others who may have been exposed to the highly contagious virus.
Most of the patients live in western areas of the county, including L.A.’s Westside, the Santa Monica Mountains and the San Fernando Valley. Santa Barbara and Ventura counties each reported one case.
At least 15 of the 18 L.A. County patients either knew one another or had clear social connections, said Dr. Jeffrey Gunzenhauser, interim health officer for the L.A. County Department of Public Health. None of the 18 could provide proof of vaccination, he said.
Gunzenhauser said the first person was diagnosed in early December, followed by 16 cases in the last three weeks of 2016 and then one more case last week. “I’m hopeful that we’re getting to the end of this,” he said.
Hershy Z. Ten, a rabbi who runs Jewish health care foundation Bikur Cholim in L.A.’s Beverly Grove neighborhood, convened a panel last week to discuss what Jewish day schools and synagogues could do to stem the outbreak and ensure that unvaccinated children are immunized.
“Measles is very, very serious,” he said. “Those children are at risk and they put other children at risk.”
A measles outbreak that began at Disneyland in 2014 infected 145 people across the United States, and dozens in Canada and Mexico. It led to the passage of a law in California requiring all children to be vaccinated unless doctors provide medical exemptions. The law took effect in July.
California is now one of three states that forbid children from opting out of vaccines because of religious or personal beliefs.
Health experts say the outbreak reveals the degree to which immunity against the disease has eroded — a problem the new law will probably improve, but not completely fix.
“It really speaks to what we’re so concerned about, which is parents making their decisions not to vaccinate their kids, and they can bring their kids into any setting and then contaminate everyone,” said Dr. Robert Adler, a pediatrician at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.
Measles is one of the most contagious viruses in the world. If an infected person walks into a room, the virus can stay there for two hours after the person leaves. And it’s dangerous — 15 people die every hour worldwide from measles, according to the World Health Organization.