In the past 11 months, 569 people have been infected and 17 have died of the virus in southern California. The US Centers for Disease Control reported that in 2015, there were a total (pdf) of 1,390 country-wide. This is now the second-largest outbreak in the US in the last 20 years. (The largest was over 10 years ago in Pennsylvania due to contaminated onions.)
Hepatitis A is a virus that damages the liver and causes it to swell. Many of the initial symptoms look like a stomach flu, but hep A can also cause the skin and the whites of your eyes to turn yellow, because the liver stops being able to filter out toxins in the blood. It spreads easily between people—especially through shared needles—or through contaminated food or drinking water. It’s an unpleasant virus whose symptoms usually last up to two months, but is only fatal about 1% of the time. [...]
Brown declared a state of emergency in part to increase the supply of vaccines available to the homeless, and other efforts to curb the outbreak are already underway. Last month, San Diego started bleaching city streets to try to disinfect them, and city councilmen have also called for testing to ensure drinking water isn’t being contaminated with feces. In other cities affected by the outbreak, local government representatives have put in requests for port-a-potties as a way of improving sanitation on the streets to stop the spread of the virus.
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