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UDOH/CDC Hepatitis C Investigation ID's 7200 Potential Exposures

Davis Hospital and Medical Center

The Utah Department of Health is nearly halfway through its investigation of a hepatitis C outbreakassociated with a former healthcare worker at two Northern Utah hospitals. Dr. Angela Dunn is with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and based at the Utah Department of Health. She says more than 7200 former patients have been identified for possible exposure.

“Just over half, 52% of those potentially exposed patients, have currently been tested for hepatitis C. So of those, 53 tested positive for having a current hepatitis C infection,"says Dunn, "And 16 of those tested positive for a current hepatitis C-2b infection.”

Dunn says the Utah Department of Health is focusing on finding cases with that matching “2-b” genotype because one is the original case and one is the former healthcare worker. She commended Davis and McKay-Dee hospitals for doing the right thing by getting involved in the massive investigation.

“The good news is that we’ve come a long way in treating hepatitis C and we have a lot of new medications that there very effective at eliminating the disease,” Dunn says.

The Department of Health launched the investigation in 2015 after tracing the likely exposure to an infected nurse who had admitted taking drugs intended for patients.

Bob Nelson is a graduate of the University of Utah with a BA in mass communications. He began his radio career at KUER in 1978 when it was still in Kingsbury Hall. That’s also where he met his wife, Maria Shilaos, in 1981. Bob left KUER for commercial radio where he worked for 25 years, and he is thrilled to be back at KUER. Bob and his family are part of an explorer group, fondly known as The Hordes and Masses, which has been seeking out ghost towns and little-known places in Utah for more than twenty years.
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