Community Corner

Murder Mystery Visitor May Have Carried Measles

Anyone who was at the Cock 'N Bull restaurant on April 30 should be alert for symptoms of the illness.

Anyone who may have visited a Peddler's Village restaurant last Saturday night is being asked to keep an eye out for symptoms of measles.

The viral disease may have been carried to the Cock 'N Bull restaurant, which was hosting a Murder Mystery Dinner Theater, on Saturday April 30, Bucks County health department director David Damsker said.

The virus that causes measles is easily spread from person to person by droplets from the infected person's mouth and nose, but Bucks health officials think the risk was low in this case.

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"The case at Cock 'N Bull was not coughing and sneezing, so we don't think she spread it to anyone else," Damsker said Friday. "But nothing is 100 perent in medicine and public health, so we wanted to get the word out to anyone who might have been there at the same time. But we think there's a good chance that no one else got sick."

Early symptoms of the measles include fever, cough and runny nose, like so many other viral diseases. But the skin rash that appears three to five days after exposure is a clue that the illness is more than just a cold.

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Anyone who might have been at the Cock 'N Bull that night who develops these symptoms should call their doctor.

"If you were at the Cock 'N Bull last Saturday and you develop a fever and a rash, let your doctor know right away," Damsker said. "Be sure to tell them on the phone that you may have been exposed to a suspected case of measles. That way, they can bring you in and make sure there is no one else in the waiting room at the time and make sure their staff is properly protected."

The county health department announced on Thursday that three people in Bucks have come down with measles. Two are children in the Council Rock School District and one is an adult, the county said.

The adult who visited the Cock & Bull Saturday night also had visited Parx Casino in Bensalem that morning.

The state health department already has confirmed that the three people have measles, Damsker said. Further confirmation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is a routine formality; those test results are expected back next week, Damsker said.

Measles is uncommon in the United States today, thanks to a vaccination campaign in the late 1950s that mostly eradicated it. Today, about 9 out of 10 children receive the Measles Mumps Rubella, or MMR, vaccine, before their third birthday.

The few hundred or so cases reported across the country each year, typically are brought in by visitors from other countries, according to the CDC.

There were seven confirmed cases of measles in Bucks County in 2009, Brandy Hunter-Davenport, spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Department of Health, said Friday.

Before these three cases, there were already seven confirmed measles cases this year, including a six-case outbreak in January, Hunter-Davenport said.

The department had just prepared and released a newsletter article on measles in Pennsylvania when word came of the Bucks cases.

Though most people who contract the measles recover from the disease just fine, it can cause serious complications and can, in rare cases, kill.

The increasing incidence of diseases such as measles, that had once been considered vanquished, demonstrates the importance of widespread vaccination, health officials say.

"Diseases that are rare in the U.S. are still circulating around the world," Damsker said in a statement Thursday, "and are only a plane flight away."

As for the three people in this outbreak, it is believed that French foreign exchange students transmitted the virus to them, county officials said, noting that France is dealing with a widespread measles outbreak.

Students at Council Rock High School North and Newtown Middle School who have not been vaccinated against measles will be , when experts estimate the incubation period will have ended.


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