Measles Outbreak 2015 News: Measles Makes Comeback As Outbreak Spreads From Disneyland

The number of cases of the measles outbreak that started in Disneyland during the holidays has now reached 51 as the disease appeared to have spread beyond patients who visited the park, according to health officials.

There are now cases of people having the highly contagious virus – earlier believed to have already been wiped out in the United States – after the nationwide routine vaccination of children in California, three other states, and Mexico, the L.A. Times reported.

"It's pretty ubiquitous now throughout the county," said Dr. Eric Handler, Orange County's public health officer and a pediatrician. "Clearly, we have an unprotected population that needs to be immunized to halt the spread of the disease."

The rapid increase in cases shows that "the measles outbreak will continue to spread," the L.A. Times also quoted the Orange County Health Care Agency as saying.

Orange County has reported six new cases of measles from people who did not even visit the theme park between Dec. 17 and 20, the period in which they thought the virus spread from one infected person or an ill family.

Two other similar cases have been reported in Ventura County and one in Alameda County.

Most of the patients have never received a measles shot or were only partly immunized.

"There is a rather significant marked increase in unvaccinated people," said Dr. James Cherry, a U.C.L.A. infectious diseases expert who has studied measles outbreaks for decades. "The hope is that we can quickly get non-vaccinated people vaccinated ... But this could develop into the worst measles [outbreak] ever since 1989."

More than 55,000 were infected during the measles outbreak between 1989 and 1991, of which about 120 have died, including around 75 people in California. Majority of those who died in California were babies and children under 5, according to the L.A. Times.

The outbreak was blamed on the failure to vaccinate pre-school kids, after which vaccines were subsidized for low-income children, the report said.

The vaccination rate remained extremely high until a 1998 study connecting the vaccine's ingredients to autism, The San Diego Union-Tribune reported. Such link has already been discredited in "scientific, medical and governmental circles," but an anti-vaccination movement in the U.S. still remains.

"The vaccine is entirely safe," said Cherry. "Information about adverse effects like autism are just not true."

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one or two children out of every 1,000 who get the measles will die. One child will suffer convulsions and be left deaf or mentally retarded following a severe swelling of the brain.