Feb. 03--More than a dozen infants enrolled at a child-care center on the Santa Monica High School campus are under a 21-day quarantine after a confirmed case of measles prompted the center's closure Monday.
The district was directed by the Department of Public Health to close the infant room at the Samohi Infant/Toddler Center until further notice, after a child less than 12 months old -- too young to be vaccinated -- was diagnosed with measles, said Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District spokeswoman Gail Pinsker.
In all, 14 infants are under quarantine.
The district first learned about the measles case Saturday and contacted parents over the weekend to let them know about the center's closure.
The measles case is the second one confirmed on the high school campus in recent weeks. The first case involved a school baseball coach.
The children at the high school's day-care center range in age from 6 weeks to 3 years. Most are related to school staffers; three are the children of students.
The toddler room, which hosts 12 children, will be closed through Thursday and a tentative reopening is planned for Friday, Pinsker said. Before reentry, children in the toddler group will have to provide a document from a doctor that they've been immunized.
Among students at the high school, 7% have waivers, for personal or religious beliefs or for medical reasons, that excuse them from the state-required MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine.
There are 11.5% students district wide with waivers, a decrease from 14.8% the year before, Pinsker said.
"We are seeing more incoming kindergartners whose parents have chosen to immunize their students," Pinsker said. "And some of our current students have gone off waiver."
About a week and a half ago, a freshman baseball coach was diagnosed with the virus. He is a walk-on coach and not a teacher or staff member of the high school, Pinsker said. It was determined the coach had come into contact with only about 70 baseball players, all of whom had received their immunizations.
In recent weeks, the district has sent out communications to families encouraging them to get their children immunized if they haven't already, Pinsker said.
The California Department of Public Health reported Monday there were 92 cases of measles in the state, 59 of which can be linked to visitors or employees at Disneyland or those who came in contact with them over the holidays.
Cases connected to the California-centered outbreak have been confirmed in Arizona (five), Utah (three), Washington state (two), Michigan (one), Oregon (one), Colorado (one), Nebraska (one) and Mexico (two).
Ten counties in California have confirmed measles cases: Los Angeles, Alameda, Marin, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, San Mateo, Santa Clara and Ventura.
Times staff writers Rosanna Xia and Lauren Raab contributed to this report.
UPDATED
5:15 p.m.: This post has been updated to add Monday's number of California measles cases.
4:04 p.m.: This post has been updated with further details about the number of infants quarantined.
The first version of this post was published at 12:06 p.m.
