Community-wide outbreak of hepatitis A in Latvia in 2008 - an update.

ABSTRACT

An outbreak of hepatitis A has been ongoing in Latvia with 2,817 confirmed cases reported between 20 November 2007 and 31 December 2008. Initially the spread of infection was due to transmission among drug users and other high-risk groups, as well as several outbreaks in Riga (affecting a school and a restaurant), but in the second half of the year led to a community-wide increase in the number of cases. Molecular analysis of 100 strains showed that 95 belonged to genotype IA, of which 89 were identical and six were single nucleotide variants of the same sequence.