Measles Scare Just Became a Little Too Real at Google

A worker at company headquarters is diagnosed with the infectious disease
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted Apr 18, 2019 7:02 AM CDT
Measles Scare Just Became a Little Too Real at Google
The Google logo at the company's headquarters in Mountain View, Calif.   (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez, File)

Google employees themselves may be Googling information about measles after a warning from the company and Santa Clara County. It seems a Google worker who was at company headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., on April 4 has been diagnosed with measles, reports BuzzFeed News. A company physician sent out a "note of caution" to employees—but apparently not all employees—informing them of the information and providing links to CDC facts about the highly infectious disease. Few other details were released because of health privacy issues, notes CNN.

BuzzFeed notes that Google has been previously criticized for allowing anti-vax information to spread on its platform, particularly through YouTube videos. It also points to a 2015 article at Wired about the relatively low rates of vaccinations at Silicon Valley day care facilities. That article notes one Google day care had a measles vaccination rate of only 68%. So far this year, California has seen 21 measles cases, two of which were in Santa Clara County. (Nationwide, the number of measles cases has surged to 555.)

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