At least 12 people were potentially exposed to measles on Long Island after a baby too young to be vaccinated tested positive at a medical facility, public health officials said Wednesday.
The infant, who resides in Suffolk County, was diagnosed and treated last week at Cohen Children’s Medical Center in New Hyde Park, on the border of Nassau and Queens counties. Officials had initially said only that the infected child was under age 5, but on Wednesday Suffolk County health officials confirmed to News 12 Long Island that the patient was an infant.
The case was thought to be travel-related, Suffolk County officials said, and the child was already home and recuperating.
The baby was younger than 12 to 15 months, which is when the first shot is usually administered. This child had not been in daycare or school, the Suffolk County Department of Health said in a statement.
Measles, considered the most contagious infectious disease in the world, is transmitted via direct contact with an infected person, by touching infected surfaces and then one’s eyes, nose or mouth, and via air droplets, where the virus can linger for up to two hours, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
With this in mind, Suffolk County officials said anyone who visited Cohen’s pediatric ER on March 3 and 4, or who was an inpatient child on the Medicine 3 unit between March 3 and March 6, were potentially at risk.
“These times reflect the potential exposure period when the infected individual was in the identified areas,” the department said in its statement.
Earlier this month, two unconnected cases of measles were diagnosed in New York City, and cases have been reported in Texas, New Mexico, Alaska, California, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Vermont.
With a vaccination rate of 82.6% among children up to age 2 in Suffolk County, health commissioner Dr. Gregson Pigott said he was confident the disease would not spread, while also urging people to make sure they were up to date on immunizations.