Hepatitis Scare Linked to N.Y. Church Communion

MASSAPEQUA PARK, N.Y. - Health officials say hundreds of people may have been exposed to hepatitis A while receiving communion on Christmas Day at a church on Long Island, N.Y.

The Nassau County Health Department said Monday it will offer vaccines this week to anyone who received communion at either the 10:30 a.m. or noon Masses at Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Massapequa Park on Dec. 25.

Health officials said someone infected with the contagious virus took part in Communion. CBS Station WCBS reports that neither the Health Department nor the Diocese of Rockville, citing privacy issues, would say if the carrier were a priest, Eucharistic minister or a parishioner.

A church spokesman told Newsday that the investigation was ongoing.

Symptoms may include fever, fatigue, poor appetite, nausea, stomach pain, dark-colored urine and jaundice.

The disease is rarely fatal and most people recover in a few weeks without any complications.

The Health Department estimates a total of 1,300 people attended both masses and was encouraging all of them to come back to the church Tuesday or Wednesday to receive either a vaccination or immune globulin, which will destroy the virus.

"The first thing we want to tell everybody is, do not panic," Lawrence Eisenstein, Commissioner of the Nassau Co. Department of Health, told WCBS correspondent Jay Dow. "We are well within the period where vaccination and immune globulin administration can prevent people who potentially were exposed from contracting the disease."

For more info:
Viral Hepatitis (CDC)