Zoo Accident Causes Keeper to Be Tested for Deadly Herpes B

A San Diego Zoo animal keeper is awaiting test results that will determine whether she contracted herpes B, a rare but deadly disease, when her hand was cut by a shattered glass vial filled with urine taken from an infected monkey.

Laboratory tests being conducted in San Antonio won’t be completed for several days, but UC San Diego Medical Center doctors doubt that Cathy Wertis, 21, a part-time zoo employee, was infected during the Sunday morning accident.

“If a person comes down with it, they’ll typically come down with symptoms as quickly as two days,” said Mark Bracker, a virologist who last month helped to complete a medical protocol that UC San Diego doctors now use to treat the virus. Humans rarely contract the deadly herpes B virus, but when monkeys do pass it along to humans, “it’s a bad disease,” Bracker said.

Wertis has not shown any symptoms of herpes B, a usually deadly disease that causes encephalitis.

Wertis, who became a zookeeper in March, plans to return to work Saturday at the zoo’s Center for the Reproduction of Endangered Species. A zoo employee for four years, Wertis previously worked in the park’s food service division.

“I’m not concerned at all about it,” Wertis said Thursday. “When it first happened, I thought I might have it, which is a scary thought.” Wertis claimed to be no longer concerned about the disease, largely because doctors have assured her that “the chances are really so slim.”

Since its discovery in 1932, the disease has proved fatal to 18 of 23 patients identified as having been infected, Bracker said Thursday. “The other ones have recovered in part with some neurological damage.”

Zoo employees rushed Wertis to UC San Diego Medical Center shortly after the accident. During a two-day hospital stay, she was treated with an antiviral drug. Wertis, who was released on Monday, continued to receive medicine through Thursday, Bracker said.

Wertis, who became an animal keeper in March, cut her hand early Sunday morning while taking a routine urine sample. The monkey previously had tested positive for the virus.

“It was just one of those things,” said Wertis, who said the vial broke as she tried to insert a stopper. “I scrubbed the wound out,” she said, and then she went to the hospital for treatment.

The monkey in question, which was imported from China in 1987, is one of seven at the zoo testing positive for the herpes B virus, zoo spokesman Jeff Jouett said Thursday. The rare macaque monkey, along with the other infected monkeys, is housed in the reproductive research center and not placed on public display.

The Sunday incident was the first time a zoo employee might have been infected with the herpes B virus, Jouett said. No zoo employee has ever died after contracting a disease from a zoo animal in San Diego, Jouett said.

Shortly after the accident, zoo employees were directed to stop using glass vials to collect urine samples, Jouett said. Samples are now collected in plastic tubes.

Jouett said zoo officials are considering other safety precautions for keepers who already wear gloves, protective clothing, shoes and face masks. Wertis was wearing rubber gloves when she took the sample on Sunday, Jouett said.

Other San Diego Incidents

Wertis’ case was the third in the past month where a San Diegan had a brush with herpes B, Bracker said. The other incidents involved employees at research facilities at UC San Diego and did not involve San Diego zoo animals.

In one case, a researcher who was jabbed with a needle while working with a monkey was treated with a tetanus shot and released because the monkey was known to have tested negative for the virus. Another researcher, who was scratched several days ago while working with a monkey in a laboratory, was treated with the antiviral drug and has not developed any symptoms, Bracker said.

The disease is common in the macaque family of monkey, of which rhesus monkeys, commonly used by researchers, are a member.