Friday, February 12, 2010
Kiryas Joel teen boys show highest risk for mumps
As many as 557 people have gotten mumps in Kiryas Joel since an outbreak began at a Sullivan County camp last summer and spread to ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities in the tri-state area and Canada, health officials say.
Teenage boys have been most prone to the virus. What has surprised health officials is that most patients had gotten their two recommended vaccination shots, leading to speculation that their immunity had waned since getting the second dose at around age 5.
"Kiryas Joel is very well-immunized," said Dr. Jean Hudson, the Orange County health commissioner.
Nurses provided by her office and New York state recently finished giving free booster shots of vaccine to some 1,800 boys and girls in sixth grade or higher in religious schools in the Satmar Hasidic community. The vaccinations were voluntary and only for kids who previously had their two shots; the state Department of Health provided the doses.
Determining how well those efforts fared will take time, since the incubation period for the virus is as long as three weeks.
"Right now, it looks like it's coming down, but we're holding our breath," Hudson said.
She sees little risk of exposure outside of the insular community. Of the 518 confirmed and 39 probable cases Orange County has recorded, only two people from outside Kiryas Joel got sick — both of them housekeepers in the village.
Three-quarters of the infections involved adolescent boys. Health officials suspect that group was most susceptible because they spend long hours in school, facing each other at U-shaped tables, Hudson said.
Health officials believe the outbreak originated with a student from the United Kingdom, where mumps is more prevalent.
The first Kiryas Joel cases surfaced in October, in perhaps the last wave of illness that had already taken root in Brooklyn, Rockland County and Lakewood, N.J. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursdaythat the mumps count has now reached 1,521. Nineteen people have been hospitalized; no deaths have been reported.
http://www.recordonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100212/NEWS/2120349/-1/SITEMAP
Teenage boys have been most prone to the virus. What has surprised health officials is that most patients had gotten their two recommended vaccination shots, leading to speculation that their immunity had waned since getting the second dose at around age 5.
"Kiryas Joel is very well-immunized," said Dr. Jean Hudson, the Orange County health commissioner.
Nurses provided by her office and New York state recently finished giving free booster shots of vaccine to some 1,800 boys and girls in sixth grade or higher in religious schools in the Satmar Hasidic community. The vaccinations were voluntary and only for kids who previously had their two shots; the state Department of Health provided the doses.
Determining how well those efforts fared will take time, since the incubation period for the virus is as long as three weeks.
"Right now, it looks like it's coming down, but we're holding our breath," Hudson said.
She sees little risk of exposure outside of the insular community. Of the 518 confirmed and 39 probable cases Orange County has recorded, only two people from outside Kiryas Joel got sick — both of them housekeepers in the village.
Three-quarters of the infections involved adolescent boys. Health officials suspect that group was most susceptible because they spend long hours in school, facing each other at U-shaped tables, Hudson said.
Health officials believe the outbreak originated with a student from the United Kingdom, where mumps is more prevalent.
The first Kiryas Joel cases surfaced in October, in perhaps the last wave of illness that had already taken root in Brooklyn, Rockland County and Lakewood, N.J. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursdaythat the mumps count has now reached 1,521. Nineteen people have been hospitalized; no deaths have been reported.
http://www.recordonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100212/NEWS/2120349/-1/SITEMAP
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