Question

Over 30 children younger than three years of age developed gastroenteritis after visiting a local water park. These cases represented 44% of the park visitors in this age group on the day in question. No older individuals were affected. The causative agent was determined to be a member of the bacterial genus Shigella. The disease resulted from oral transmission to the children. Based only on the information given, can you classify this outbreak as an epidemic? Why or why not? If you were an epidemiologist, how would you go about determining which pools in the water park were contaminated?

Answer 1

Answer:

No this is not an outbreak

Explanation:

No it cannot be classified as outbreak because an outbreak is when the number of affected individuals in an epidemic is much higher as compared to the estimated values. However, an epidemic is the one that affects the people around different countries of the globe.

This can be considered as endemic that is restricted to a certain set of people in a community

I would have studied pattern of movement of affected kids. The common pool to which all these kids visited can be the infectious one. Also one can test the pathogen in infected kinds, and look for similar pathogen in pool water through testing.