Stuck at School but Safer for It : Inoculation: At Huntington Beach High, 1,000 students endure measles shots. Then they get candy for being brave.

Dozens of students lined up nervously outside the school career center Friday, and they winced as one when they heard the dreaded command from the school nurse: “Roll up your sleeve.”

They were among the more than 1,000 students at Huntington Beach High School who braved the needles and were inoculated against measles in response to an outbreak of at least 10 cases in the last three weeks.

Afterward, they got candy as a reward for being brave.

“They’re going to hurt,” said Michelle Osgood, 19, a senior, as he waited for his shot. “But they’re necessary, because otherwise it’s just going to go around.”

Health officials reported last week that two people had died of measles this year in Orange County. Since Jan. 1, more than 130 cases have been reported, making the county one of the most active areas in the state for the disease.

The mass inoculations are part of a U.S. Public Health Service protocol begun in January to help control a national epidemic of rubeola, or red measles. The vaccine being given was for mumps and rubella, or German measles, as well as rubeola.

“I saw that guy’s face, and he was in pain,” one shaky student said.

“I don’t want to get it!” another girl complained, peering nervously at the students getting their shots.

“OK, go back to class,” said Carol Kanode, the school nurse. “She’ll just make everyone else nervous. I’ll get her in my office later.”

Kanode added, “We haven’t lost anybody yet”--although one girl had fainted.

A few minutes after she got permission to leave, the girl who did not want the shot was back, this time with a friend in tow for moral support. The shot turned out to be “a lot better” than she thought it would be, she said afterward.

“Where’s the candy?” she asked, emerging from the inoculation.

“It didn’t hurt much,” said Beau Marseilles, 15, a ninth-grader. “The prick was easy, but when they put the chemicals in, it goes through your whole arm.”

One of the six nurses giving the shots, Diane Mastright, said Marina High School in Huntington Beach, where she works, had recently gone through a similar mass inoculation.

“We did the same thing--over 1,000 in a day,” she said.

On top of that, Mastright said, she has been giving five to six shots per day in her office.

Marina had 20 documented cases, all in students who had been inoculated as babies. Santa Margarita High School in Rancho Santa Margarita also had a mass inoculation this year, as have three or four other schools in the state.

Health authorities last year began recommending that even students who have been inoculated once receive a second dose of vaccine because of concern about its failure rate, which is about 5%.

Karen Adams, a nurse from the county public health services division on hand to help give the shots, said cases had been reported in people as old as their 40s.

Notices were mailed to all 2,147 families with students at the school, telling parents that they would have to sign a consent form for their children to be immunized. The shots could not be given to students sick with anything more serious than a cold.

For those who qualified for a shot, Friday was the day. Assistant Principal Jim Lande ushered students into the career center. Although he said he has had measles, he got a shot too because he has not had the mumps.

“It’s going terrific--the kids are so cooperative,” Lande said.

But even his example was not enough to quell the anxiety altogether.

As Michael Fagundes, a ninth-grader, watched others get their shots through a window, he looked skeptical.

“I don’t know,” he said before opting out of the inoculation. “I’m scared. I’ve got to go to the dentist tomorrow anyway, and I don’t like needles. They flip me out. I’d rather get sick so I wouldn’t have to come to school.”