Two people who returned to Southern California from overseas were infected with measles, health officials said Tuesday, emphasizing the travelers were not connected to other cases that prompted quarantines involving hundreds of people at two Los Angeles universities.
The latest case in Los Angeles County involves someone who arrived April 23 at Los Angeles International Airport, according to the county Department of Public Health.
The person, who was not identified, is the sixth LA County resident to contract measles so far this year and one of more than 700 nationwide.
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Meanwhile, authorities said Orange County's first measles case of 2019 involve a woman in her 20s who recently returned from overseas.
Word of the latest cases came as California State University, Los Angeles, and the University of California, Los Angeles, announced that nearly all of the nearly 800 total students and staff members who recently came in contact with infected students had been released from quarantine.
No quarantines were announced in the latest cases, but officials warned that people who were in the Los Angeles airport's international terminal or a nearby parking area may have come in contact with the infected person.
Contact also might have occurred at a Home Depot store in suburban Lancaster.
Measles symptoms include runny nose, fever and a red-spotted rash. Most people recover, but measles can lead to pneumonia, brain swelling and even death in some cases.
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Vaccinations administered in two doses are 97 percent effective, say health officials, who blame the increasing spread of the disease in recent years on people who are not vaccinated.
Seventy people were still quarantined at Cal State-LA on Tuesday and 27 at UCLA.
The UCLA quarantine was set to expire at the end of the day and at Cal State-LA on Thursday.
Those already released had been vaccinated or were immune because they previously had the disease.
