19.09.2005
NIZHNY NOVGOROD, September 19 (Itar-Tass) – The latest reports from Nizhny Novgorod say that 710 people, including 137 children, have been hospitalised with the diagnosis of hepatitis A in Russia’s third-largest city after Moscow and St. Petersburg.
All infection hospitals are full, and 200 additional beds have been prepared in clinics of other specialties, health department director Vladimir Lazarev said at a weekly meeting in the mayor’s office on Monday.
He said the flow of patients had somewhat decreased — 36 people contacted city hospitals with complaints suspicious of hepatitis A, a viral liver disease.

However, city health authorities believe that it is too early to speak of an near end to the hepatitis epidemic.
Lazarev said that causes of the disease outbreak in two districts of Nizhny Novgorod had not been established so far.
Specialists from Moscow who have come to aid Nizhny Novgorod’s epidemiologists do not rule out that infection originated with food.
The city’s health authorities have banned all street trade in vegetables and dairy products. The sale of this food remains permitted only on city markets.
Police have got orders to liquidate any points of trade, including in watermelons and melons, along roads.
The water will be repeatedly chlorinated in the city and its population vaccinated.
Medics say workers of the city water supply system and children have been already vaccinated.
An additional 2.5 million roubles have been issued for vaccination of people who had been in contact with the infected.
City education department director Irina Tarasova said hepatitis patients included two preschool children and 20 percent of school students under 18.
She assured that sanitary and hygienic control in kindergartens had been tightened.
Schools are the safest place for children at present, as sanitary and epidemiological services have carefully checked them before the beginning of the new school year, Tarasova said.