The state is warning medical providers to be on the lookout for patients who show symptoms of the measles after a teenager boarded an Alaska-bound cruise ship while suffering from the highly contagious disease earlier this month.
Alaska's state epidemiologist, Joe McLaughlin, said it's unlikely that others will contract the virus, but that the state agency issued an alert to warn health care providers to be alert for patients who present with measles-like symptoms.
"This is really just to notify health care providers," said McLaughlin, chief of the section of epidemiology with the Department of Health and Social Services. "The probability is very low that we would see a secondary case in Alaska."
On Aug. 6, a teenager and her parents boarded a cruise ship in Vancouver, British Columbia, the state said in a public health alert.
The girl started experiencing measles symptoms while traveling in Thailand. McLaughlin said the girl had traveled through Tokyo to Oregon, before boarding the cruise ship in Canada.
Four days before boarding, the girl began suffering from a facial rash, red eyes and fever, the state said.
Within three hours of boarding the ship, the girl was placed in medical isolation, where she remained until she was taken to the Ketchikan Medical Center on Aug. 8, the state said.
She was discharged from the hospital Aug. 10; that same day, the patient was confirmed to have been infected with measles. She had never received the vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella, the state said.
[From February: Alaska updates vaccine guidelines as mumps outbreak swells with over 200 cases]
By the time the girl boarded the cruise ship, she had been been experiencing measles symptoms for four days, at which point the likelihood of spreading the illness is very low. Other passengers only faced potential exposure to the virus for three hours before the girl was put into medical isolation, McLaughlin said.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told the cruise ship to notify everyone on board who may have been exposed to the patient to be on watch for any symptoms of measles, according to the state.
Those cruise passengers disembarked in Seward on Aug. 13, the state said, and many are traveling through the state before heading home.
The potential dates when an exposed cruise ship passenger could start developing symptoms are Aug. 13 through Aug. 27, the state said.
Measles is a highly contagious virus. The virus was declared to be eliminated from the U.S. in 2000. The majority of U.S. cases of measles now come from unvaccinated travelers visiting from abroad, McLaughlin said.
Worldwide, about 90,000 people die from the virus annually, according to the CDC. The CDC says that one dose of measles vaccine is about 93 percent effective; two doses are 97 percent effective.
The last time Alaska saw a case of measles was in 2015, when a Fairbanks man returned from a trip to Mongolia. Before that, the most recent case had been in 2000.
As of 2016, Alaska was lagging behind the national median for vaccination, McLaughlin said. Eighty-six percent of children ages 19 to 35 months had received at least one dose of the MMR vaccine, and 89 percent of Alaskan kindergartners had received two doses. Nationally, those numbers are at 91 and 94 percent, respectively.
"It's critical that we get the message out about how important it is to make sure that children and adults are all up to date on their recommended vaccines," McLaughlin said.
According to the CDC, measles symptoms generally appear one to two weeks after a person is infected with the virus; symptoms usually start with a cough, fever, red and water eyes, and a runny nose. A few days after symptoms start, white spots, called Koplik spots, may appear inside the mouth. Between three and five days after symptoms manifest, a rash usually breaks out on the face, spreading down the body, along with a high fever.