Santa Monica High School officials notified parents that one of the school’s baseball coaches has been diagnosed with measles, marking the latest case in an outbreak affecting the U.S. and Mexico.
In an email sent to parents Friday and obtained by NBC4, Principal Eva Mayoral said the Department of Public Health had confirmed the diagnosis earlier in the day.
However, students were at low risk of contracting the highly contagious virus, Mayoral said. None were asked to stay away from the campus.
"The Department of Public Health guides the school on how to handle contagious illnesses and they have advised us that there is only a small possibility any student has been exposed in this case; as a result they have given us no further direction," the email said.
Mayoral said every baseball player at the school had been immunized against measles, according to school records.
The freshman baseball coach, who was not identified, had not been present at the school since developing symptoms, the email said.
Santa Monica High School was the second California school campus to identify a measles case Friday. Students at California State University, Channel Islands, were warned to immediately get measles vaccines after one student was diagnosed with the virus.
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Measles has spread throughout California and beyond in an outbreak originally linked to people who visited Disney theme parks in Anaheim over a few days in December, though the outbreak has since spread to people who didn’t visit the theme parks, health officials have said.
The highly contagious measles virus has spread to at least 70 people, most in California, in six states and Mexico.
