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Maintaining Public Health Worker Protections: Hepatitis

Maintaining Public Health Worker Protections: Hepatitis

Key Points:

Key Points:

Recommendations for Industry

Maintaining Public Health Worker Protections: Hepatitis

While the world attempts to return to some sort of normalization in 2021, it is important for businesses to learn from and build on the COVID-19 employee protection programs to ensure we are better prepared for the next pandemic – or simply a local or facility-originated infectious disease. TAG is doing exactly that with our new weekly Public Health-focused newsletters. This week we recognize the designation of May as Hepatitis Awareness Month in the US.

Viral hepatitis is an inflammation of the liver commonly caused by a virus, but it may also be linked to certain drugs, toxins, or alcohol. It has five forms – A, B, C, D & E – with varying modes of transmission: Hepatitis A can be transmitted person to person or through food or water contaminated with feces from an infected person; Hepatitis B, C & D are chronic diseases typically linked to contact with infectious bodily fluids (e.g., blood); Hepatitis E is primarily waterborne and not common in the US.

Hepatitis is of such concern in the US that the Department of Health & Human Services has developed The Viral Hepatitis National Strategic Plan: A Roadmap to Elimination for the United States | 2021–2025 with a goal to “eliminate viral hepatitis as a public health threat in the United States.” It was deemed necessary as the nation has an estimated 3.3 million Americans living with chronic viral hepatitis (2016), with:

  • unprecedented hepatitis A outbreaks, and cases increased by 850% between 2014 & 2018.
  • progress on preventing hepatitis B stalled.
  • hepatitis C rates nearly tripled from 2011 to 2018.

The Business Impact. Hepatitis A is of most concern to food businesses because of its spread when someone unknowingly ingests the virus (even microscopic amounts) through close personal contact or through eating contaminated food or drink. Thus an infected person in the workplace can easily and quickly spread the virus to both co-workers and customers. In fact, a widespread person-to-person hepatitis A outbreak which was first identified in 2016 has impacted at least 35 states. As of May 7, 2021, there have been 39,239 cases resulting in 23,883 hospitalizations and 372 deaths even though hepatitis A and hepatitis B are vaccine-preventable diseases, and hepatitis C is curable.

As we have learned from COVID-19 as well as other transmissible viruses (such as norovirus) a key component of reducing the transmission of viruses is eliminating close contact. As relates to Hepatitis A, this would be close contact with other persons as well as direct contact with food/drink. As such, all workers should wash hands before handling any foods, thorough sanitation should be maintained, and infected workers should be excluded from food handling.

For a full list of business recommendations, as well as other information on Hepatitis, download TAG’s Hepatitis Fact Sheet from our Public Health Services webpage. Contact TAG for further assistance with development or assessment of your non-crisis Public Health Program.

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