The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health planned plans to give the public an update today on the measles outbreak.
As of Tuesday, California had 93 confirmed cases, including 28 in Orange County and 21 in Los Angeles County but none on any Los Angeles Unified School District campus, state and local health officials said.
This morning’s scheduled public update was to be delivered by L.A. County’s interim Health Officer, Dr. Jeffrey Gunzenhauser, who told the county Board of Supervisors Tuesday that there is “some hope that we will get ahead of the outbreak in the near future,” citing a smaller number of cases arising from the outbreak’s second and third waves.
But he cautioned that there was “still work to be done” and said it could take weeks or months to be certain that the outbreak was in retreat.
Gunzenhauser said California has confirmed 93 total cases in the outbreak, the largest in 15 years. The key to slowing the spread of infection is to shorten the time between when a patient gets a rash and when health officials are notified and can impose quarantines and offer immunizations, he said.
Of L.A. County’s 21 confirmed cases of measles, 17 are linked to the outbreak that began at Disneyland in December, Gunzenhauser said. Nonetheless, the outbreak has had no noticeable effect on Disneyland or other Disney theme parks, according to Walt Disney Chairman & CEO Bob Iger.
“We really have not been able to discern any impact at all from that,” he said Tuesday in an interview on CNBC. “In fact, if you were to look at Disneyland, the quarter that we’re currently in, we’re up from where we were last year in both attendance and in bookings or in reservations…”
