Would this be considered an outbreak

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Reference no: EM133735601

Section 1: Background

You have been asked to investigate a suspected food-borne illness outbreak at a local church ice cream social. There were 75 people who attended the church social and 46 of them became sick. The onset of illness in all cases was sudden, characterized chiefly by nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and abdominal pain. None of the ill persons reported having an elevated temperature; all recovered within 24 to 30 hours. Approximately 20% of the ill persons visited physicians.

Section 2: Outbreak?

An outbreak may be defined as an epidemic that is confined to a certain area. An epidemic is the occurrence of cases of an illness that clearly is in excess of normal expectancy. One way to determine if an illness is "more than expected" is to calculate the Attack Rate.

The Attack Rate is calculated by counting number of new cases (46 in this case) occurring during a short period of time, divided by the population at risk (75 in this case) at the beginning of the time period. This rate is multiplied by 100.

Question 1. What is the attack rate for this illness at the church ice cream social?

Question 2. Would this be considered an outbreak? Why/Why not?

Section3: Epidemic Curve

It is often very helpful to develop an "epi curve" for a suspected outbreak. An epi curve is constructed in a program like Excel in order to understand the magnitude and timing of the outbreak. The curve is essentially a histogram with time on the x-axis and case counts (number of sick people) on the y-axis. Look at the epi curve below for the Ice Cream Social and answer the following questions.

Question 3. If the church ice cream social was held between 5-7 pm. How many hours later (roughly on average) were people getting sick? In other words, what is the incubation period for this outbreak?

Question 4. Is this typical of a type of food-borne infection orperhaps a food-borne intoxication? Why?

Question 5. Which bacteria that we discussed in the lecture video (and textbook) could be a likely culprit here based on the incubation period?

Question 6. There are two outliers in this graph. One person got sick at 3pm BEFORE the ice cream social. What questions would you want to ask this individual if you were investigating the outbreak?

Question 7. What questions would you like to ask the person that was sick later the next day (10 am)?

Section4: Calculating the Relative Risk Ratio

Although you may be thinking that this is clearly an outbreak, and that most of the people who reported illness where sick relatively quickly after eating at the ice cream social, we still need to determine which food (or activity) made the participants sick.

Reference no: EM133735601

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