Disneyland measles outbreak isn’t largest in recent memory

Published 10:18 am Thursday, February 5, 2015

LOS ANGELES — The largest U.S. measles outbreak in recent history isn’t the one that started in December at Disneyland. It happened months earlier in Ohio’s Amish country, where 383 people fell ill after unvaccinated Amish missionaries traveled to the Philippines and returned with the virus.

The Ohio episode drew far less attention, even though the number of cases was almost four times that of the Southern California outbreak, because it seemed to pose little threat outside close-knit religious communities.

The Disneyland outbreak has already spread well beyond the theme parks that attract tens of thousands of visitors from around the globe, who could then return home with the virus. Disease investigators for weeks raced to identify measles-stricken patients, track down potential contacts and quarantine them if necessary.

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Public health experts say success at containing the outbreak will largely depend on how many unvaccinated people get the measles shot.

“This was a wake-up call,” said Dr. James Cherry, a pediatric infectious disease expert at the University of California, Los Angeles. “It could continue to smolder” if not enough people get vaccinated.

The latest outbreak began when an infected person spread the illness to more than three dozen people at Disneyland who then exposed many others. Most were unvaccinated, according to state health officials.

In contrast, the Ohio outbreak “stayed contained within those communities, and outside people said, ‘Well, it doesn’t really affect me.’ What’s different with this one is more people can relate to Disneyland,” said Dr. Gregory Wallace of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.