CA: 2018 Hepatitis- San Diego outbreak over

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Source: https://www.10news.com/news/hepatiti...n-diego-county


Hepatitis A emergency officially ends in San Diego County
Allison Horn
11:54 AM, Jan 23, 2018

SAN DIEGO (KGTV) - The hepatitis A public health emergency in San Diego County ended Tuesday after a month with no new cases reported.

The San Diego County Board of Supervisors approved a motion to end the emergency situation, which started Sept. 1.

There have been 577 confirmed cases, 20 deaths, and 395 hospitalizations, county officials said. From May to September, 2017 there was an average of 84 cases reported each month...

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Source: https://www.sandiegocounty.gov/conte...patitis_A.html
San Diego County Hepatitis A Outbreak Cases and Deaths:
Data reported through February 7, 2018 and posted on Feb. 13, 2018*
*Table will be updated each Tuesday

Cases	Deaths	Hospitalizations
580	20 (3.4%)	398 (68.6%)

Note: Table does not include all reported hepatitis A cases in the county; only local-outbreak-related. Data are provisional and subject to change.

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Source: http://en.brinkwire.com/170159/hepat...-north-county/


Hepatitis A outbreak continues to simmer in North County
By Brinkwire on February 24, 2018

Weekly public health reports this week and last have each added a pair of newly-confirmed cases to the outbreak total. Although that?s nowhere near the number of new cases that flooded in every week in August and September, it?s still a faster pace than the roughly every-other-week frequency that government records show San Diego County averaged before from 2012 through 2016.

?The outbreak is not over, and the most recent cases seem to be slightly geographically skewed to the northern part of the county,? said Dr. Eric McDonald, chief of the county?s Epidemiology and Immunization Services Branch...

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Source: https://www.sandiegocounty.gov/conte...patitis_A.html San Diego Hepatitis A Outbreak

On January 23, 2018, the County ended the local health emergency, declared on September 1, 2017, in response to the local hepatitis A outbreak. The action does not mean the outbreak is over, and the County will continue efforts it has taken to control the spread of the disease.
Anyone who received their first hepatitis vaccination before mid-September, 2017, should get a second dose now to complete the series and assure long-term protection. Although the first dose of the vaccine is considered to be around 95 percent effective, that protection will eventually begin to decrease and a second shot boosts immunity for between 20 and 40 years, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
The outbreak is being spread person-to-person and through contact with fecally contaminated environments. The majority of people who have contracted hepatitis A during this outbreak have been homeless and/or illicit drug users.
Efforts of the County and its community partners to halt the hepatitis A outbreak focus on three key areas: vaccination, sanitation and education


San Diego County Hepatitis A Outbreak Cases and Deaths:
Data reported through March 5, 2018 and posted on March 13, 2018*
*Table will be updated each Tuesday

Cases	Hospitalizations	Deaths
586	401 (68%)	20 (3.4%)

Note: Table does not include all reported hepatitis A cases in the county; only local-outbreak-related. Data are provisional and subject to change.

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Source: http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/...029-story.html

Two years after it started, San Diego declares end to deadly hepatitis A outbreak
Hep A
Paul SissonPaul SissonContact Reporter

Two years in, San Diego?s hepatitis A outbreak is finally over.

Dr. Wilma Wooten, the county?s public health officer, said Monday that enough time has now passed to formally declare a curtain call for the contagion that killed 20, sickened nearly 600 and spurred a complete re-think of how the region handles homelessness.

?Last Thursday, it was officially 100 days since the most-recent case, and, for hepatitis A, that?s the threshold we use that allows us to say it no longer meets the definition of an outbreak,? Wooten said...

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Source: https://www.voiceofsandiego.org/topi...s-audit-finds/

County Inaction Exacerbated Hepatitis A Crisis, Audit Finds
A state audit concludes that local officials failed to adequately plan for and quickly ramp up their response to the 2017 hepatitis A outbreak that eventually led to 20 deaths and sickened nearly 600.
Lisa Halverstadt
December 20, 2018

A top county health official warned last April, in the early weeks of the hepatitis A outbreak, that last year?s devastating health crisis could be one of the worst outbreaks since vaccines were introduced, and urged an aggressive response.

Yet the county waited four months to declare a public health emergency. By then, the disease had killed 15 people and sickened hundreds.

The April 28 email, which Voice of San Diego for months sought through public records requests, is one of several blistering revelations about local governments? response to last year?s hepatitis A outbreak in a state audit released Thursday...

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Source: https://www.usnews.com/news/healthie...tis-a-response

San Diego Health Official Defends Response to Hepatitis A Outbreak
A state audit says county and city officials could have acted more quickly to battle the outbreak, but a top health officer is pushing back.
By Gaby Galvin, Staff Writer Dec. 21, 2018, at 4:41 p.m.

San Diego County's top health official says a state audit criticizing his agency's response to a deadly and widespread hepatitis A outbreak is misleading.

The audit, requested by state lawmakers, is the latest review of the local response to the massive outbreak of the highly contagious liver disease, which infected 584 people, hospitalized 398 and killed 20 between its detection in March 2017 and the end of January 2018. The majority of cases occurred in the city of San Diego.

The new audit acknowledges local health officials took some "reasonable" early action to curb the outbreak, but says they lacked an adequate plan to prevent and respond to hepatitis A. Their slowed response, the audit says, may have let the outbreak spread further.

But Nick Macchione, director of the county's Health and Human Services Agency, says the audit was not conducted by public health experts. He calls it unbalanced and says it largely ignores commendations from experts with the California Department of Public Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for his agency's work to curb the outbreak.

"It was an unprecedented event," Macchione says. "We came up with something ? there were no infectious disease guidelines. No, as we call it, 'playbook' (for hepatitis A). We developed it."...