San Diego hepatitis A outbreak after 2 years



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San Diego County health authorities have declared that they have killed two years ago, killed 20 people and sickened nearly 600.

Public health officer Dr. Wilma Wooten said Oct. 25 marked 100 days since the most recent case, the threshold for no longer meeting the definition of an outbreak, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported Tuesday.

San Diego has had only 15 new boxes in 2018.

Local health authorities detected the infectious disease in February 2017. Investigators determined the first occurrence occurred during the week of Nov. 22, 2016.

San Diego's homeless population.

City and county governments promoted vaccination, washed streets, installed portable toilets and hand-washing stations, and put up temporary shelters capable of housing 700 people at a time.

The cost of fighting was more than $ 12 million, the Union-Tribune reported.

Bob McElroy, chief executive of the Alpha Project, said, "One of several organizations operating new shelters," said Bob McElroy, chief executive officer of Alpha Project.

"The reality is, if you've got a place for people to be safe, you're not going to have the kinds of sanitation issues," McElroy said.

Dr. Jonathan Fielding, distinguished professor of the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, applauded San Diego's willingness to spend the necessary money.

"Hepatitis A is very contagious," Fielding said. "Getting something like this under control, it takes money, it takes a lot of bureaucracy and it takes a lot of coordination. It's clear that you have that in San Diego."

The need for resources is not over, he said.

Wooten, the public health officer, said the mobile vaccination "foot teams" of the public health nurses.

A key lesson from the outbreak that it often took place to convince at-risk homeless people to accept vaccination that they viewed as a conspiracy government, Wooten said.

"But we knew it would take us to keep it going, and we had to keep it going and trust it," she said.

Hepatitis has outbreaks elsewhere in the nation, including Michigan, where it dates to August 2016.

Information from: The San Diego Union-Tribune, http://www.utsandiego.com

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