Health officials in Kingston, Ont., are reporting an outbreak of an intestinal illness that has sickened dozens of residents recently, but are struggling to discover the source.<\/p>\n
Cryptosporidiosis is caused by exposure to the microscopic parasite\u00a0cryptosporidium. Symptoms include nausea, vomiting, fever and especially diarrhea.<\/p>\n
Southeast Public Health (SEPH) says it has investigated 114 cases in the past nine weeks.<\/p>\n
According to SEPH’s deputy medical officer of health Dr. Ethan Toumishey, the cases are much more highly concentrated than usual.<\/p>\n
“The common experience of [cryptosporidiosis] in Ontario is sporadic cases that people might be exposed to in more limited numbers,” Toumishey said. “So this is definitely a very significant signal that we’re seeing … and trying to investigate to the best that we can.”<\/p>\n
Toumishey said that investigation has zeroed in on various water sources including Kingston’s water treatment plant, though the parasite can also be consumed with food.<\/p>\n
“We’re going to keep trying to work as many angles as we can to determine [where this is coming from],” Toumishey said.<\/p>\n
People who suspect they’ve contracted the illness are urged to stay home while sick, wash their hands often and stay out of pools, hot tubs and splash pads for two weeks after their diarrhea symptoms have resolved.<\/p>\n
The health unit said some people who contract the illness may not experience any symptoms, while others may recover temporarily but relapse until it leaves their system.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Health officials in Kingston, Ont., are reporting an outbreak of an intestinal illness that has sickened dozens of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":720623,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[49,48,184352,260592,260590,84,260589,54342,260591,60356,235071,192285,94900],"class_list":["post-720622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cryptosporidiosis","tag-diarrhea-symptoms","tag-ethan-toumishey","tag-health","tag-intestinal-illness","tag-kingston","tag-microscopic-parasite-cryptosporidium","tag-seph","tag-southeast-public-health","tag-sporadic-cases","tag-water-sources"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/720622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=720622"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/720622\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/720623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=720622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=720622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=720622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}