A Shot at Prevention

Hundreds of children, along with a few teachers and cafeteria workers, dropped their pants and winced Thursday as they took a shot to ward off the hepatitis A virus at a trio of makeshift school inoculation clinics.

Although health officials were recommending that only those who ate a potentially tainted strawberry/blueberry treat receive the immune serum globulin, some parents were not taking any chances. At Ramona Elementary School west of downtown, one of three schools where county and school nurses joined forces Wednesday to provide 500 inoculations, parent Brenda Pineda said it didn’t matter what her 11-year-old daughter told her.

“She doesn’t like shots, so she will say no, she did not eat it,” Pineda said as daughter Joanna shifted from foot to foot while waiting in the school auditorium. “I’d rather her be safe.”

Today, six more clinics will open, followed by eight more next week. The shots can cost up to $18 apiece. The corporate parent of the firm that processed the offending strawberries has offered to pay for all shots given in Los Angeles.

The hepatitis scare broke Tuesday when authorities announced that 9,000 children and others in the Los Angeles Unified School District had eaten a dessert made from the same batch of strawberries implicated in a hepatitis outbreak in Michigan. More than 175 cases have been reported in Michigan. So far, no cases have been reported locally, but the usual two-week period between exposure and the onset of symptoms is only half over.

In other developments Thursday:

* About 1,000 children in Georgia also received shots. In Michigan, health officials were trying to track down 1,400 people who attended a Special Olympics event March 22 that featured strawberry shortcake made with the suspect fruit.

* School officials acknowledged that they had failed to notify one of the 18 Los Angeles campuses where the berry dessert was served. At Mt. Vernon Middle School in the Crenshaw district, 122 students were served the fruit Monday--three days after a notice not to offer the desserts went out to schools.

* The federal Food and Drug Administration offered a few more details about the possibility that strawberries from Andrew & Williamson Sales Co., the San Diego food processor that sliced, washed and froze the berries a year ago, had also found their way into some commercial products.

Frozen strawberries from the firm were apparently used in jams, jellies, pies and frozen daiquiri mix, said Jim O’Hara, an FDA spokesman. In some cases, such products have been located and recalled as part of Andrew & Williamson’s voluntary recall of the berries.

“In all likelihood, these products would have been consumed some time ago,” O’Hara said. But he added that the agency is “continuing to go down the chain of distribution. [Some] products two to three levels down have been put on hold.”

Rumors circulated among some parents of possible problems with the inoculations. At Coldwater Canyon School in North Hollywood, mother Mirta Santana wanted assurances before she let her daughter get the shot. She wondered if the inoculations--which are derived from blood--could be contaminated with illnesses far worse that hepatitis A, including HIV.

Nurses persuaded her that could not be the case. In an interview, county disease control Director Shirley L. Fannin said such fears are unfounded because the serum is carefully screened.

“It’s like that old game of gossip. . . . Little pieces of [information] get distorted,” Fannin said. “The gamma globulin is as pure as the FDA can make it.”

School authorities blamed a clerical error in the Mt. Vernon notification case.

The school district first received word that some strawberry desserts might be contaminated late March 27. The next morning, the district used a phone tree to get word to 45 of the 46 schools that had received deliveries of the dessert and learned that 18 of the schools had served it.

However, it was not until 7:45 a.m. Monday that the district discovered that Mt. Vernon had been left off the calling list, said district spokesman Brad Sales. By then, Monday’s breakfast had already been served.

At a Thursday afternoon district committee meeting at district headquarters, Deputy Supt. Ruben Zacarias said, “We’re trying to find out where that glitch is, if indeed that’s true.” But he also said changes were already being contemplated in the phone tree protocol, which Sales said was intended for districtwide notifications--not something involving a few dozen schools.

Sales said the district was investigating the oversight, but suggested it might be a consequence of the district’s antiquated computer system. Workers had to manually record where the suspect strawberry lots had gone, then input the information into a computer.

The committee meeting was dominated by a speaker-phone conversation between school board members Julie Korenstein and Victoria Castro and two U.S. Department of Agriculture officials.

Leaning over the phone, Korenstein quizzed the acting undersecretary of food, nutrition and consumer services, Mary Ann Keeffe, about whether other surplus food provided to schools was safe.

“As the mother of four children, I don’t think you need to be nervous or fearful,” Keeffe answered. “It’s a very strong system, and we have a very safe food supply in this country.”

Elsewhere around Los Angeles, parents and students generally expressed relief at the appearance of the first clinics so soon after they learned of the strawberry problem.

“I’m really relaxed now,” said Santos Garcia, just seconds after her daughter hopped off the nurse’s gurney, which was decorated with a Disney sheet.

Schools had spent the past two days coping with complications of year-round schedules, which sent one group of students off on vacation this week. Contacting them, and determining who ate the dessert, became a priority for school officials concerned that the period between exposure and symptoms was ending.

But the tired-looking principal at Ramona School declared victory. “We’ve been calling, and I think we got all but one,” said Susan Lio Arcaris. “That family will be getting a home visit from us today or tomorrow.”

As Arcaris spoke, student after student stoically took the shot, most of them without a sound. It was over in an instant, leaving them smiling as nurses covered the injection site with a Day-Glo Band-Aid.

“Like a little pinch,” said 10-year-old Ricardo Larios.

A few employees from the school district’s truck operations even showed up at the county van parked outside Coldwater Canyon School. One of them said his wife persuaded him to go along with the inoculations after the district recommended that the 17 delivery workers who handled the fruit get shots. Another admitted that he got the shot for another reason: He had tried some of the new strawberry/blueberry dessert while making his rounds.

“I think things went very smoothly,” said Dr. Helen DuPlessis, director of student medical services for the school district.

Though the first day’s efforts were covered by the department’s own reserves of immune serum globulin, enough serum arrived from the Michigan health department Thursday to complete 9,000 inoculations if necessary, officials said, and more is available if needed.

Officials reiterated that hepatitis A is a relatively mild form of the virus, particularly in children. Fannin said the virus is reported only about 10% of the time it is contracted. In 1995, just 1,033 cases were reported in Los Angeles County. The statewide occurrence rate is almost twice as high as Los Angeles’, a fact Fannin attributed to the more common outbreaks in northern rural counties.

Meanwhile, in Sacramento, amid discussion of class-size reduction efforts, Gov. Pete Wilson paused to urge shoppers “not to panic and blame those who are not guilty of anything, notably California’s berry farmers.” He described a call to his office from a Watsonville grower, who said he had a large order canceled within hours of the announcement of the school lunch problem.

Wilson noted that this is the second straight year that California berries have been affected by problems beyond growers’ control; last year, the products were mistakenly linked to a parasite. “It is distinctly unfair, and it doesn’t make sense. . . . The berries in question were imported,” Wilson said.

Times staff writers Amy Pyle, Hector Tobar and Martha Groves contributed to this story.

* CHAIN REACTION

Ralphs Grocery Co. halted orders of Mexican strawberries. D1