Nearly nine weeks after the Interior Health Authority (IHA) sounded the alarm following a meningitis outbreak in the Okanagan, health officials predict it’s now coming to an end.
“We’re past the highest risk part of this event, the IHA’s Dr. Karin Goodison said on Monday.
Meningitis is a potentially deadly disease that can attack the brain.
Over the course of the outbreak, there was an immunization campaign unlike any other in the Okanagan. Grade 9 students, aged 14 and 15, were encouraged to get the meningococcal vaccine, but the IHA later expanded that recommendation to students up to 19 years of age.
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“We’ve had 11,400 doses done since declaring the outbreak on Dec. 14,” Goodison said.
In the end, more than 14,000 students have been immunized, compared to only 3,000 students in previous years.
The IHA said 12 people were diagnosed with the disease during the latest outbreak. One of those people diagnosed later died but health officials said it’s not clear if the death was caused by the meningitis.
Nineteen-year-old Aidan Pratt of Oliver died in October, several weeks before the IHA declared an outbreak. His father went public after, saying the IHA should have acted sooner.
However, the IHA has said it’s not clear if Pratt died of meningitis.
“We have one death that there was a post-mortem diagnosis of meningococcal. We don’t know if that was the cause of death. So we actually don’t have any people recorded that have specifically died of meningococcal disease that we are confirming at this time,” Goodison said.
As for next year, the IHA says the Okanagan shouldn’t see another outbreak like this year because roughly 70 per cent of students at risk in the Okanagan heeded the warning and got their shot and won’t have to get another one next year.
“I would expect that we would be a much lower risk of having a meningococcal outbreak,” Goodison said.
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