SAN DIEGO (CNS) — An outbreak of mumps among San Diego State's football team has now increased to 14 confirmed cases and one probable case, the university announced Wednesday.
On Sept. 18, SDSU released a statement confirming three cases and two probable cases among "a student athletic team," later reported as the football team by the San Diego Union-Tribune.
As of Wednesday, only one associated case is related to the outbreak outside the team.
"Because mumps symptoms can develop 12 to 25 days after exposure, these new cases reflect spread within the team and potential exposure to additional close contacts," the SDSU statement said. "The university continues to take a number of daily actions."
These actions include working with San Diego County Public Health Services to conduct daily screenings of the team, testing, contact tracing, as well as offering an additional dose of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine booster to those identified as a "close contact."
As a result of the outbreak, SDSU is offering a free MMR booster clinic on Thursday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the university's Calpulli Center.
According to the Cleveland Clinic, mumps is a viral illness that causes salivary glands to swell painfully and is frequently associated with fever, headache, muscle aches, fatigue, loss of appetite and in rare cases can cause inflammation of reproductive organs risking infertility, brain swelling, hearing loss and pancreatitis. The illness is relatively uncommon Wednesday, due to the effectiveness of the MMR vaccine.
As a viral infection, there is little treatment other than letting it run its course -- typically a week to 10 days.
The outbreak happens as the Aztecs prepare for their inaugural Pac-12 conference game against Texas State at Snapdragon Stadium on Saturday, coming off a lopsided 41-16 loss against the Toledo Rockets last weekend.
SDSU Coach Sean Lewis told reporters at a news conference that he would not discuss the health of his players.
"Again, there's players that are up, there's players that are down for a lot of different reasons," he said. "Due to [the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act], due to [the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act] and the respect and privacy of our student-athletes, I'm not going to say anything further about that matter."
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