Camp Mumps Outbreak Sickens Over 1,500 People

CDC reports boy contracted mumps in United Kingdom, infected campmates

FRIDAY, Feb. 12 (HealthDay News) -- An outbreak of mumps that began at a summer camp in New York in June 2009 has since infected 1,521 people in New York and New Jersey as of the end of January 2010, according to an article published in the Feb. 12 issue of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

P. High, of the Ocean County Health Department in Toms River, N.J., and colleagues describe how the outbreak began at a summer camp for tradition-observant Jewish boys. The index case had visited the United Kingdom, returning on June 17, 2009, and he subsequently became symptomatic at the summer camp 11 days later. Transmission occurred at the camp and then continued in multiple locations once camp participants went home, the researchers note.

Most (61 percent) of the patients were children aged 7 to 18 years, and 76 percent of cases were male, the investigators discovered. The outbreak occurred despite the fact that 88 percent of the patients had received one mumps vaccination, and 75 percent had received two doses.

"This is the largest mumps outbreak that has occurred in the United States since 2006," the authors write. "Although mumps vaccination alone was not sufficient to prevent this outbreak, maintaining high measles, mumps, and rubella vaccination coverage remains the most effective way to prevent outbreaks and limit their size when they occur."

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