Global Gaming Expo attendees warned of hepatitis-A exposure - Monday 12th of September 2005
Health officials in Nevada warned Friday that as many as 25,000 people who attended a Las Vegas gambling industry convention this month might have been exposed to a a virus that causes a serious, though rarely fatal, liver disease.
A sales representative at a booth where free ice cream was handed out became sick with hepatitis A after returning home from the Global Gaming Expo, officials with the Clark County Health District and Minnesota-based Schwan Food Company said.
Gambling executives, casino representatives and product manufacturers from 50 states and 20 countries attended the expo Sept. 13-15 at the Las Vegas Convention Center, according to conference sponsor, the American Gaming Association.
Schwan and Clark County health officials said Friday that there was no evidence the free ice cream handed out at the expo was tainted.
"Its important to make clear the individual was the exposure, not the product," said Lawrence Sands, community health director for the Las Vegas-based health district.
However, Sands said the man, who was not identified, was at the most infectious stage of the illness at the convention.
Schwan spokesman Mike Gunderson in Marshall, Minn., said the employee, a sales representative from Colorado, did not handle the ice cream.
"The assumption is that he did shake hands with a number of people there," said Gunderson, who added that the unidentified employee followed food booth and product advisories and used a hand sanitizer.
Sands said Clark County health officials were notified of the case late Thursday by their counterparts at the Tri-County Health Department near Denver.
Dr. Richard Vogt, director of the health department that serves Colorados Adams, Arapahoe and Douglas counties, said the man in his early 40s was recovering at home in Douglas County. He said he could not further identify the man for health care privacy reasons.
Vogt said health investigators did not believe the man had contact with many people in his community after becoming ill. But a family member was given immune globulin and vaccine as a precaution.
Hepatitis A is a viral infection of the liver that can cause jaundice, fatigue, abdominal pain, loss of appetite, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and fever. The virus most often is spread through fecal-oral contact, such as touching hand to mouth after using the bathroom or shaking the hands of infected people who did not wash properly.
Those infected usually develop symptoms 15 to 50 days after exposure to the virus.
"Most people feel very sick," Sands said, adding that the virus can be fatal to some people with immune system disorders or liver disease.
The virus is not passed through the air, and not everyone exposed to the virus becomes infected.
Although there is no treatment for hepatitis A, symptoms can be prevented if a person exposed to the virus receives gamma globulin within 14 days.
Sands advised people who got free ice cream to at the Schwans booth to contact their local health department or physician.
The Clark County Health Division planned to provide free gamma globulin and hepatitis A vaccine clinics Saturday and Sunday in Las Vegas.
The American Gaming Association was issuing a health warning by e-mail to registered conference attendees, said Holly Thomsen, spokeswoman for the association in Washington, D.C.
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