LOS ANGELES, Oct. 30 (Xinhua) -- After two years of outbreak, San Diego in U.S. state of California declared an end to hepatitis A contagion on Monday.
Wilma Wooten, the county's public health officer, said that enough time has now passed to formally declare a curtain call for the contagion that killed 20, sickened nearly 600 and spurred a complete rethink of how the region handles homelessness, according to local newspapers.
"Last Thursday, it was officially 100 days since the most-recent case, and, for hepatitis A, that's the threshold we use that allows us to say it no longer meets the definition of an outbreak," Wooten said.
The first likely case of the infectious disease was tracked in the week of Nov. 22, 2016, and the disease was detected by the health department in February 2017.
By late spring of last year, there were hundreds of cases, a dozen deaths and a growing public outcry for measures to address the unsanitary living conditions among the region's homeless population.
The city and county government worker together to promote vaccination and sanitation, launching street-washing campaigns, installing portable toilets and hand-washing stations, and setting up temporary shelters large enough to house 700 people at a time.
Nationwide, the combined case totals have surpassed 8,000 with 76 deaths and over 4,500 hospitalizations, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
