A childhood disease that made a comeback last year, especially in Alaska and Hawaii has picked back up again after a slight dip in January. The latest number of mumps cases reported to the Alaska Section of Epidemiology is 306.
None, however, have yet been confirmed on the Kenai Peninsula, according to Dr. Amanda Tiffany, an epidemiologist with the state in Anchorage.
Really, try to stay at home, and try to stay away from your family and your friends that you may live with, because the mumps virus requires close contact.
“I mean here in Anchorage we’ve had a lot of cases. Like about 94 percent of all the cases that have occurred in Alaska have been here in Anchorage, so we are particularly concerned when it’s a new community and someone thinks they have mumps," she said. "Because if we have no indication of transmission of the virus, in Kenai, for example, then that’s definitely a cause for worry; I mean if people start having symptoms and they just don’t go to the doctor, and they kind of Google it and they’re like, ‘oh, I think I have mumps.’”
Usually the annual number of cases reported annually in the united states is fewer than 500. Hawaii currently has nearly a thousand. Of Alaska’s 306 confirmed and probably cases, only five were outside Anchorage and the Mat-Su Borough.
“The cases that have been reported outside of Anchorage and Mat-Su, without exception, the first case that occurred in each of those regions, was in an individual upon investigation, we discovered they had a history of travel to Anchorage in three to five weeks before their onset of their symptoms," she said.
Tiffany says cases in Alaska have affected people from three-months of age to 79 years, with a mean of 25 years.
Mumps, it turns out, is extremely contagious, and Tiffany says patients are advised to self-isolate as soon as symptoms arise.
“The doctor should advice them to stay at home for five days after symptoms start. So that means no school, no work, no going to the mall, no going to the movies, don’t go to church, no dinner parties," she said. "Really, try to stay at home, and try to stay away from your family and your friends that you may live with, because the mumps virus requires close contact for person-to-person spread.”
Tiffany says serious complications are rare, but if untreated, it could lead to inflammation of the brain or spinal cord, loss of hearing, and in men, sterility.
She also says that unless a waiver was granted anyone who’s attended to public school in the last few decades has probably had the first two doses of the vaccine.
Two doses is 88 percent effective, she says. A third shot, or booster, is advised for pretty much anyone who hasn’t had a shot in the last five years. An important exception is pregnant women. Tiffany says vaccines should be available at any healthcare provider.