Hepatitis A Outbreak Worsens In Ohio

The statewide hepatitis A outbreak in Ohio has worsened, according to data from the Ohio Department of Health (ODH). Five people have been killed by the disease, and more than 1,000 people have been hospitalized.

Ohio typically averages 40 cases of hepatitis A per year, the ODH told Patch.

Since the start of the outbreak, in January 2018, there have been 1,687 documented cases of hepatitis A in Ohio. The majority of affected people are male (60 percent of patients), but people as young as 2 and as old as 81 have been diagnosed as suffering from hepatitis A.

Southwest Ohio has been hit hardest by the outbreak, particularly Hamilton and Butler counties. There have been more than 260 documented cases of hepatitis A in Butler County alone during this outbreak.

To combat the spread of the disease, the Ohio Department of Health has provided more than 5,000 doses of the hepatitis A vaccine to local hospitals. The department also declared hepatitis A a community wide outbreak, giving Ohio greater access to vaccine doses through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

(For more news like this, find your local Patch here. If you have an iPhone, click here to get the free Patch iPhone app; download the free Patch Android app here. And like Patch on Facebook!)

Hepatitis A

Hepatitis A is a liver infection caused by the hepatitis A virus. The highly contagious viral disease is typically spread when someone unknowingly ingests food or drinks contaminated by small, undetected amounts of feces from an infected person. This is sometimes seen in the food industry and is one reason that proper hygiene — specifically, hand-washing — is of vital importance.

The disease is preventable with proper vaccination, though. As such, America's hepatitis A rates plummeted once vaccinations became widely available in 1996.

But that trend is reversing, the CDC said, and an increase in the number of community-wide hepatitis A outbreaks has increased in a dozen states — California, Utah, Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, West Virginia, North Carolina and Massachusetts.

Symptoms include yellow eyes or skin, fatigue, loss of appetite, abdominal pain, dark-colored urine or gray-colored stool, joint pain, nausea, vomiting and fever.

People can fall ill from a few weeks to many months, and some will have to be treated at a hospital. Hepatitis A can sometimes be deadly.

For the current outbreaks, the CDC recommends that drug users — both those who inject drugs and non-injectors — get vaccinated, along with individuals who are in recovery, are homeless or are behind bars. Additionally, the CDC recommends men who have sex with men get vaccinated. Those who work in emergency departments and corrections facilities in outbreak areas should also be vaccinated.

But targeted vaccination to the most at-risk groups is "the best way to control disease spread," the CDC said.

Photo from Shutterstock