Hep A reporting breakdown
When I was an undergrad, I used to love reading the electronic police blotter that the university police produced every night. Of most interest to me was the early Monday morning postings detailing all the weekend's post-bar excitement (like campus police called to remove "drunk and belligerent older women" from the all-male residence hall).
I didn't expect to see the same police blotter treatment after an outbreak; I didn't know that the Rock Island County Sheriff's Department would get involved.
The report [notification of a hep A positive test] normally would have been given to Cheryl Dobereiner of the health department, but she was on vacation. Also, it was filled out on an incorrect form - for hepatitis B, C or D, diseases that are considered more serious than hepatitis A. The law states that hepatitis B, C and D cases may be reported within seven days, in contrast to the more immediate 24-hour requirement for hepatitis A.
Dobereiner returned to work at Rock Island County on July 13, having been on vacation since June 23. She noticed the incorrect form used by the Metropolitan Medical Lab and called the facility.
Metropolitan Lab did not have hepatitis A on its list of diseases that must be reported within 24 hours, according to the sheriff's department report. A representative from the lab was not available for comment Monday.
Good to have Hep A on the State's Health Department's 24hr notifiable disease list (since the post-exposure shot, effective at limiting the chance of infection, is time-dependent).
It would be great to have the disease on everyone's 24hr reportable list.
Even better to have someone filling out the form correctly.
And it's hard to believe that at least 22 illnesses linked to this outbreak might have been avoided if a different person was on vacation.
Oregon man calls 911 to protest missing juice box
In keeping with the storyline of idiots who think 911 is their babysitter, a man who called 911 to complain that McDonald's left a juice box out of his drive-through order was arrested on Monday, Portland television station KPTV reported.
Raibin Osman appeared before a Washington County judge Tuesday on a charge of misusing emergency services. He said he called emergency dispatchers after the drive-through employee wouldn't come back to the window to give him a juice box.
McDonald's food handler in Calgary has hepatitis A
There has been a bunch of coverage locally and nationally. While watching Canada AM this morning I caught this on the Crawl; "Thousands exposed to Hep A at Calgary McDonald's" The Calgary Herald, and Calgary Sun both covered the story today.
From the Herald:
Ron Thompkins, who drives a semi-trailer truck in the area and eats at that McDonald's almost everyday, plans to get vaccinated. "This really sucks," he said, explaining that he's concerned about the cleanliness of McDonald's in general. "The bathrooms are very dirty. The toilets are filthy. It needs to be cleaned more."
I think it's interesting that Thompkins brings up that he's concerned about how often the bathrooms are cleaned, and still eats at the McDonald's almost every day. I'm not surprised, likely the safety of the food at this location was never in question for Tompkins until the hep A news hit -- that's an assumption I'm making based on him eating there often. Now he's been told about the risk and he's voicing something he noticed but didn't think was a problem. This is one of the problems food safety communicators face -- though around 1 in 4 people get sick each year, events like these are still quite rare, and only when they occur do some individuals (consumers, staff, managers) really take notice.
For today's iFSN infosheet sheet, we used the story as the hook, and focused on what food handlers can do. Hep a is more problematic for businesses than other pathogens because staff can have and pass on the virus without showing symptoms, and even if the food handler is a handwashing superstar you are going to have a line up outside your restaurant (or at the health unit/clinic) while patrons get their post-exposure shots. So maybe the answer for some businesses is to require (and possibly pay for) hep A vaccines for food handlers. Staff turnover, lack of protection from other bugs and the cost are problems, but vaccinations may be worth requiring to keep your company out of the newspaper.
