Disneyland: 19 Contract Measles While At Park Within Last Month

Concerns are growing out in California as officials have issued a health alert over the last week due to a measles outbreak originating at the Disneyland park. Nineteen cases of measles have been reported over the course of the last month, and now officials are doing everything they can to battle against it.

The L.A. Times reported that before the cases in December, 2014 was already the worst year in nearly two decades for measles in the states of California.

Nineteen people from three different states have fallen ill with measles over the course of the last month. All of them had visited Disney Parks in California, and health officials are growing ever more concerned.

All of the patients with measles visited either Disneyland or Disney California Adventure between the days of December 15 and December 20. Six of the cases come from California, one is from Colorado, and the other two are from Utah.

Officials from the California Department of Public Health and the Orange County Health Agency said that of the 16 cases in the states, only two were verified to have been vaccinated against measles. Some were partially vaccinated and two were too young to have been vaccinated.

19 measles cases reported with ties to Disneyland. http://t.co/G7bFbL9WXc #disneyland

— DisneyAccess (@DisneyAccess) January 10, 2015

Think Progress reports that the two young children are dependent upon herd immunity to protect them from measles.

Doctors recommend that children should receive their first measles shot at about the age of one-year-old. A second vaccine should be given about the time they are five years of age.

Of the original six cases, three were unvaccinated children who were all old enough to have gotten the vaccine. These six cases all came from contracting measles at Disneyland.

Disney has been in the news a lot lately, as a ship from the Disney Cruise Line fleet came to the rescue of a man who had fallen overboard from the Royal Caribbean Oasis of the Seas. The ship he was on had not noticed he was gone and luckily, the Disney Magic scooped him up.

Now, the situation with the numerous cases of the measles at Disneyland, there’s not a whole lot that can be done by the company about that. Millions upon millions of people visit the Disney Parks in California every single year, and people are going to be exposed to millions of others.

California officials simply hope that people will learn with the measles outbreak at Disneyland and go get vaccinated if they aren’t already.

[Image via Mother Jones/Disney]