LOS ANGELES, Sept. 26 (Xinhua) -- The death toll from an outbreak of Hepatitis A in San Diego County in the U.S. state of California has reached 17, the latest update released by the county's Health and Human Services Agency revealed on Tuesday.
Seventeen people have died of the highly contagious virus in San Diego, the southernmost county in the state of California. Among the 461 cases that have been confirmed, the number of hospitalizations stands at 315, the update showed.
A third of the cases involved people who used illicit drugs and are considered homeless. Local authorities have installed new bathrooms for transient laborers in San Diego County to help curb the spread of the virus.
As of Sept. 23, more than 42,000 vaccines had been administered in the county and the Board of Supervisors has decided to keep a local public health emergency in place. The emergency was first announced on Sept. 1 and was scheduled to be reviewed every two weeks.
Hepatitis A, most commonly spread person-to-person through the fecal-oral route, is an infectious disease that can sometimes cause liver failure and even deaths.
