16:27 | 10/ 10/ 2005
NIZHNY NOVGOROD, October 10 (RIA Novosti, the Volga area, Olga Skomorokhova) – Sixty-three people, including 11 children, were hospitalized last weekend in central Russia with suspected Hepatitis A.
A spokesman for the Nizhny Novgorod governor said 92 people were discharged at the same time.
The Emergency Situations Ministry said a total of 542 people diagnosed with hepatitis were still in local hospitals.
Another 31 people are in hospital in Balakhna, a town neighboring Nizhny Novgorod where the hepatitis outbreak was first registered.
Twenty-five people are in in-patient clinics in Dzerzhinsk, outside Nizhny Novgorod.
About 1,700 cases of Hepatitis A have been registered in Nizhny Novgorod since the outbreak in early September. More than 65,000 people have been vaccinated and more than 9,000 city residents have been treated with immunoglobulin, the governor’s spokesman said.
Health and Social Development Minister Mikhail Zurabov had previously said that poor communal services and a disruption to the water supply in late August could have caused the outbreak.