Google warns MEASLES after infected worker visits campus

Health officials in California confirmed that a Google employee visited the tech giant's campus in Silicon Valley while he was suffering from measles.

The patient, described only as an adult resident of San Mateo County, entered Google offices at 1295 Charleston Road in Mountain View on April 4th.

Marianna Moles, a public health spokeswoman for Santa Clara County, said at a press conference on Wednesday that there was no additional risk to the public arising from the visibility of Google.

BuzzFeed got an email sent on April 13 by a Google doctor at Google to the building's employees on Charleston Road, warning them of measles exposure as a precaution. It is not known how many people work in the building.

The offices are located 800 meters from Google's vast headquarters complex and its parent company, Alphabet Inc., known as Googleplex.

The company doctor also contacted county health officials to report the case.

The incident that occurred April 4 at Google is not related to four recent cases of measles reported in Santa Clara County, where vaccination rates are close to 97%, reported ABC 7 News.

At the same time, health officials in San Mateo County, where the anonymous worker lives, try to follow the movements of the infected patient to find out who may have been exposed.

Measles is a highly contagious viral infection that spreads easily in an infected person by coughing, sneezing or even breathing.

Symptoms appear between six and 19 days after infection and include runny nose, cough, sore eyes, fever and rash.

In one in 15 cases, measles can lead to life-threatening complications, such as pneumonia, seizures and encephalitis, which can lead to death.

Measles can be prevented by receiving two vaccines, the first at 13 months and the second at three years and four months to five years.

This week's US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that 555 cases of measles had been confirmed this year, up from 465 a week ago. This is the highest number since 2000, when the disease was completely eradicated in the United States.

While 20 states, including California, have reported cases, New York was the epicenter with nearly two-thirds of cases.

The highly contagious but nationally preventable disease outbreak was partly attributed to a misinformation campaign that anti-vaccination activists have been conducting on social media in recent years.

CNN announced that in February, MP Adam Schiff sent a letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai calling on his company to crack down on anti-vaxxers by spreading inaccurate information about the side effects and risks associated with the drug. measles vaccine.

"I write about my concern that YouTube [owned by Google] surfaced and recommends messages discouraging parents from vaccinating their children, posing a direct threat to public health, and reversing progress in fighting vaccine-preventable diseases, "wrote the California Democrat.