{"id":740668,"date":"2026-08-17T09:28:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-17T09:28:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/740668\/"},"modified":"2026-08-17T09:28:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-17T09:28:09","slug":"hepatitis-a-spreading-in-town-as-parents-urged-to-vaccinate-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/740668\/","title":{"rendered":"Hepatitis A spreading in town as parents urged to vaccinate children"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Parents or carers of children who are five or under in the Barry area are being urged to take up the offer of Hepatitis A vaccines for their child.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">An outbreak in the Vale of Glamorgan town has seen 11 confirmed cases since December 2025.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Public Health Wales said Hepatitis A is spreading in the community, but that no single source has been identified and that vaccinating children will help protect them, their families and the wider community.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Hepatitis A can be present in young children without any obvious symptoms.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The free vaccines will be offered at Barry Hospital between Tuesday, 18 August and Saturday, 22 August 2026.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Dr Chris Williams, a consultant epidemiologist at Public Health Wales said the vaccine is necessary to try to control the outbreak<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;The easiest place for it to spread from is from with young children under the age of six and so if we can vaccinate that age group that will prevent the transmission from those children and stop the spread,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Those eligible will receive a letter or text from Cardiff and Vale University Health Board, inviting them to take up the offer of a vaccination.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The vaccine is being offered to children five or under who live in Barry or attend a childcare setting in the town.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Parents or carers of children who are five or under in the Barry area are being urged to&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":740669,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[59,102,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-740668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-gb","tag-health","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/740668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=740668"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/740668\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/740669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=740668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=740668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=740668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}