Possible Outbreak of Hepatitis C in Utah May Affect Thousands

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There have been 7,200 patients that were potentially exposed to hepatitis C outbreak at a Utah hospital, after they were in contact with an infected former nurse, Elet Nielson, at the hospital.

Fox News reports that this is considered an outbreak. "When we have two or more hepatitis C-related infections, we consider it an outbreak," Angela Dunn, a doctor, said.

Nonetheless, 35 percent of the 7,200 patients contacted to receive free testing have appeared so far, Fox News added in the report. The doctor also mentioned that they hope to get half at the end of the day and that they only had a few weeks left for the free testing. However, there were already a number of people who were tested positive for the disease; and yet, the complete tally of the infected people will be released in February or March.

Two hospitals, Mckay-Dee Hospital and Davis Hospital, in Ogden and Layton, respectively, have offered free testing until the end of the month, according to Fox News. These two hospitals have previously employed Nielson, aged 49, who contracted this rare strain of liver disease, genome 2b. Therefore, exposure to the disease is concluded to occur between June 17, 2013 and Nov. 25, 2014,

In line with this, Yahoo! News also revealed that the current outbreak as told by Dr. Dunn is the first ever report for the disease, hepatitic C, although the same outbreak happened in 2009 in Denver. In that case, a nurse who stole some drugs replaced them with used syringes that were filled with saline. She also adds that it is important that everyone who has has contact should undergo the testing because symptoms of the disease could just lay dormant for many years.

"People can have no symptoms for decades and then all of the sudden their liver will start failing and that's a deadly part of the disease," Dr. Dunn said. "So it's important to be identified early in the disease court when people don't have symptoms so they can get effective treatment."

In the related news by Standard Examiner, it says that "Both that strain and a different variation of hepatitis C have been identified through testing."The nurse was fired then after using medications illegally. She later on pleaded to a misdemeanor for possession of the controlled drug, which she only paid a fine of $413 and did not serve jail time.

In addition, Jenny Johnson of the Utah Department of Health has confirmed that some of those who have already undergone blood tests for hepatitis C since November, added to positive tests, have been identified. However, the state would not release any further information before all testing is done.