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Medical experts in Nashville warning of Hepatitis A outbreak


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Medical experts in Nashville are warning of a new epidemic, as thousands of cases of Hepatitis A are confirmed here in Tennessee, hundreds of them in Davidson County.

"We're still in an outbreak, even though we're seeing maybe one or two cases a week in Nashville, you have to keep in mind that sounds low but that's normally what we would see in an entire year," says Brian Todd, of Metro Public Health.

Health leaders aren't sure what's causing the spread, but they have seen trends in the communities the virus strikes.

They say it started nationally with the homeless community in San Diego and traveled east, but the homeless community isn't necessarily the root of the problem locally.

"For us, out of the 226 cases maybe a handful are homeless, what we have found is its more among drug users and men who have sexual contact with other men," says Todd.

Heptatitis A attacks the liver, and is spread through person to person contact. But experts say the general public doesn't need to be overly concerned unless they're not vaccinated, or if they've dined at a restaurant where an employee has it..

"It's very easy to spread person to person, it can sometimes contaminate water systems, it can get in food, but the kind of transmission we're talking about in this instance is close person to person transmission," says Dr. William Schaffner of Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

The good news is the vaccines are abundant and very effective, even retroactively. You can get it up to two weeks after exposure, and it will still work.

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