Valley Fever Outbreak Reported, Tied to Quake : Health: Forty-five cases--most of them in the east county--have been recorded since Jan. 26. Officials blame dust, dirt stirred up by temblor.

Ventura County health officials and physicians Thursday reported a dramatic increase in valley fever--particularly in the Simi Valley area--that they attribute to dust and dirt stirred up by last month’s earthquake.

“I think there is an outbreak,” said Marilyn Billimek, an epidemiologist with the county Department of Public Health.

Billimek said 45 blood samples taken from Ventura County residents have tested positive for the airborne disease since Jan. 26, many more than normal for this time of year. All but five samples came from east county residents, Billimek said, with one sample from Oxnard, one from Ventura and three from Camarillo.

Before 1992, no more than 10 cases of valley fever were reported in the county in an entire year, she said. In 1992, there were 60 cases, and 53 were reported in 1993.

Officials attributed the increase in recent years to unusually windy conditions and other weather-related factors that caused the valley fever fungus to grow more actively than normal, dry out and then become airborne in the form of spores, officials say.

But they said the rash of cases in recent weeks is probably due to the earthquake, which stirred up the top layer of dust and soil that contains the fungus.

While 65% of those who inhale the spores that cause valley fever fight off the illness without showing any symptoms, others require anti-fungal medication to rid themselves of the chest pains, fever and other complications it causes. Valley fever is rarely fatal, health officials say, and spreads beyond the lungs in only 1% of the cases.

Simi Valley pulmonary specialist Gurdip Flora said he has never seen such a high concentration of infected patients come through his office as he has in the past few weeks.

Flora said he is treating five or six confirmed sufferers of valley fever and another three or four he suspects have the disease. Four of the confirmed cases were diagnosed Feb. 14, the most he has ever seen on a single day. “That was really overwhelming,” he said.

But while the numbers mounted quickly, Flora said the cases have begun to taper off.

“Overall, I think we may be seeing a plateau in the cases,” Flora said, “because the incubation period is two to three weeks, and most of the patients should have manifested the symptoms and presented it to their private physician by now.”

The last significant outbreak that he treated, Flora said, came during construction of the connector of the Moorpark and Simi Valley freeways, when road crews kicked up the top layer of dirt and dust where the spores are.

In Los Angeles County, health officials reported fewer cases than normal since the quake.

“There’s definitely a cluster there in Simi Valley and parts of Los Angeles County are contiguous with that, so we may see some increase in that area, but it hasn’t been reported to us yet,” said Dr. Roshan Reporter, an epidemiologist with the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services.

“I would say that a few doctors saw a cluster of cases and got pretty excited about it, and the media ran with it,” Reporter said. “It’s a disease that we’ve always had. It’s nothing new.”

So far, she said only three confirmed cases of valley fever have been reported in Los Angeles County this year, but she stressed that only the most serious cases--usually involving hospitalization--are ever reported to the county.

There were 92 cases reported in Los Angeles County in 1992 and 63 last year, Reporter said.

Media coverage of the post-earthquake increase in cases may add to the number reported, she said.

“Everyone’s calling us now because they’re hearing about it,” she said. “If every patient that came in with a cough got tested for valley fever, we’re going to see a large number of cases, because we know it’s out there.”