715 Children May Have Been Exposed to Hepatitis A

More than 700 children may have been exposed to hepatitis A when they ate strawberry-topped waffles for breakfast in a Head Start program.

The 715 children, ages 3 to 5, were to be immunized against the disease today, said Francie Wise, director of communicable disease control in Contra Costa County, east of San Francisco. The 139 adults who ate the strawberries also will be immunized.

Sysco Corp. distributed the frozen fruit, which was served April 21. One week later, the company said, the strawberries may have been contaminated with the virus.

According to health officials, Sysco said there was a chance the strawberries were part of a batch that was linked to a February outbreak of hepatitis in Boston. In that incident, which involved strawberries at an ice cream social, seven people fell ill with the disease and 360 may have been exposed, Wise said.

A phone call to Houston-based Sysco seeking comment was not returned Tuesday.

The virus is most often transmitted from an infected individual via fecal matter. For example, workers who do not clean their hands after using the restroom, and then handle food, could transmit the virus. Infants can expose their parents during a diaper change.

It takes 15 to 50 days for symptoms to appear, which means that if any of the California children had contracted hepatitis A, symptoms would arise Friday or Saturday at the earliest, Wise said.

“None of the students has complained of illness,” she said. “But in children the disease is almost always without symptoms.”

The children ate the strawberries at 22 different locations across Contra Costa County. They were to be given an immunoglobulin shot. Wise said the shot “either keeps you from getting the disease or modifies the virus in the body.”

The county will pay for the shots--which cost $5 to $10 apiece--as well as the 50 nurses enlisted to administer them, Wise said.

Hepatitis A, whose symptoms are flu-like in nature, affects the liver. Wise said it is relatively mild in children but can cause nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and jaundice in adults.