Deadly Hepatitis A outbreak in San Diego has left 15 dead already
City has 5 business days to develop plan for remedying “fecally contaminated environment.”
San Diego has been battling with an extremely aggressive outbreak of Hepatitis A, an infection that targets the liver and may result in death in severe cases.
The victims have been mainly homeless people, who have been coming to the city in significantly increasing numbers.
The situation is grave: since November 2016, the outbreak has infected hundreds of people and left 15 dead; the crisis appears to be hitting the city’s homeless the hardest. According to the San Diego Health & Human Services Agency (HHSA), as of Sept. 5, 2017, the current outbreak has infected 398 people and caused 279 hospitalizations.
The San Diego HHSA noted that most of the people infected with the disease are either homeless or drug users, and that the outbreak is being spread between people through contact with a “fecally contaminated environment.” That essentially means that the new victim is usually an unvaccinated person who ingests food or water, touches an object, or uses drugs contaminated with fecal matter from an infected person.
Aggravating things is the fact that San Diego’s homeless population has been skyrocketing: while the number of homeless people across the county increased 5 percent in the past year, according to the Regional Task Force on the Homeless, those living on the streets of downtown San Diego spiked 27 percent. The inland North County area also saw a spike, with 11 percent more homeless than a year ago.
Sanitary street washing has commenced in downtown San Diego, and will continue until the outbreak abates. Meanwhile, San Diego County requested that city move forward with a list of specific sanitation actions designed to help control the spread of the disease.
The county gave the city five business days to respond with a plan for remedying what it called a “fecally contaminated environment” downtown. The county will soon expand its efforts to other cities in the region, where the outbreak has now produced nearly 400 confirmed cases.
The county moved forward last weekend with its own contractor, who installed 40 hand-washing stations in areas where the homeless often gather. There are plans, according to the city’s letter, to add more stations next week.
In addition to regularly pressure-washing dirty city right-of-ways with chlorinated water, the county also asked the city to “immediately expand access to public restrooms and wash stations within the city limits that are adjacent to at-risk populations.”
County health officials already have provided hepatitis vaccinations to 19,000 people, including 7,300 considered to be at-risk of contracting the disease. Now, public health officials are requesting that food handlers obtain vaccinations (if they aren’t already vaccinated).
“This is a proactive recommendation because the ongoing outbreak means that the risk to the general public is higher than normal,” Dr. Wilma Wooten, county public health officer, said. “A person who becomes infected with hepatitis A may spread the disease to others before experiencing symptoms. In an occupation such as handling food, workers may expose more members of the public than workers in other occupations.”
No common sources of food, beverage or drugs have been identified that have contributed to his outbreak, although the investigation continues.
This is critical, as our downtown area is famed for some amazing restaurants.
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Comments
Fall is coming and the “snowbirds” are moving back to SoCal for the winter. San Diego is also a hot spot for spinal meningitis…. but that vulnerable groups are young people.. college age.
Dang, San Diego just got rid of 53 bums and now more are replacing them.
If only these Americans were illegal aliens ejected by their homelands or CAIR survivors from Obama’s global trail of tears.
Good bennies + warm winter = homeless
Traveled to San Diego last January and was shocked at the amount of homeless there. They interrupted service at two places we were eating at, the whole place begging for money. Lovely city, but the homeless hoards every where we went is what I remember most. Really is very sad.
the results of 8 years of Obumbler and how many of Saint Jerry Brown as Guv (4th term).
That’s Fascist-Progressive “sympathy” for you.
Use free market economics to find the homeless a job? Nope!
Use Marxist philosophies to take from others to give them a home? Nope!
Hose them and their meager belongings down to limit the bad press from just letting them die on the street? Ding!-Ding!-Ding!
I wish we wouldn’t call them homeless. They are making their homes on our streets. There are so many services here in CA if they actually wanted to live inside and not in the various tent cities showing up everywhere here in CA. When they ask for things at our church, never never do they want to go to our fantastic rescue mission. I’m sick of it
Vagrant, they are vagrants and there were once enforced laws against vagrancy prior to the Politically Correct and wholly inaccurate term Homeless.
Very convenient that the article makes no mention of where this disease came from. Just another benefit of undocumented immigrants.
So if I read this aright … San Diego is now washing human feces off its streets.
If the streets are turning into open sewers, I’m surprised they only have hepatitis A. The classic diseases of primitive sanitation—cholera and dysentery—should be right around the corner. Both are excellent ways to put even more human feces on the street.
All are treatable if not allowed to get out of control … but it will take a lot more than hand-washing stations to do it.
Just watched local OC news interviewing homeless man, saying he doesn’t want to leave. He gets fed every day, why would he leave. Infuriating. This really isn’t hard
Amazing downtown restaurants. KKKahlifornia. Homeless camps. And now here come the diseases.
I’m thinking someone decided not to care for their environment enough to do something effective.
“This is critical, as our downtown area is famed for some amazing restaurants.”
And now, apparently, crap filled streets.
According to King County, WA, councilmember Larry Gossett, hosing human waste off of sidewalks is racist, and in NYC it’s now legal to urinate in public, so I expect we’ll be seeing a lot more formerly-eradicated diseases appearing in Democrat-run cities like this.
Amazing restaurants and fecal infected streets.
Not somewhere I want to go and definitely not somewhere I want to eat. Ugh!