A Whatcom County man was diagnosed with measles after visiting a contagious relative in Los Angeles, health officials said Thursday.
A Whatcom County man has been diagnosed with measles, the seventh case in Washington state since the start of the year.
The man, whose age wasn’t given, was exposed while visiting a contagious relative in Los Angeles, Calif., a state health-department spokesman said Thursday. The Whatcom County man was identified as potentially exposed before he became contagious and has remained at home since, posing little or no infection risk to the public.
It’s not clear whether the man had previously been vaccinated or whether his illness is related to an ongoing measles outbreak tied to Disneyland park in Orange County, Calif., health officials said.
Nationwide, at least 154 people in the U.S. were diagnosed with measles between Jan. 1 and Feb. 20, according to most recent figures from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. At least 118 of those cases are related to the Disney outbreak.
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Measles is a highly contagious virus that infects 90 percent of people exposed to it if they’re not immune. It can cause serious illness, and in some cases, disability and death. Most people in the U.S. are immune, either because they’ve had the disease or they’ve been vaccinated.
In Washington, there have been two additional cases in Grays Harbor County tied to the Disney outbreak and four apparently unrelated cases in Clallam County.