The
Los
Angeles County Department of Public
Health
has
just sent a letter to DOMAINfest
Global attendees regarding the
illness outbreak that occurred after
this month's conference in Los Angeles
(my reports on the outbreak are in a
series of articles posted last week
found at these links Feb.
8, Feb.
9, Feb.
10 and Feb.
11). The
letter says:
The
Los Angeles County Department of Public
Health is contacting persons who
attended social gatherings at the Playboy
Mansion during the first week of
February 2011 to investigate a cluster
of respiratory illness. If you attended
an event during this time period and
have had respiratory symptoms we
encourage you to contact your
healthcare provider as soon as possible.
If
you do not have a medical provider
please call the Acute Communicable
Disease Control program at (213)
240-7941 during normal business
hours and (213) 974-1234 after
business hours. We can assist you
with testing and treatment for your
illness.
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Image: Sura
Nualpradid / FreeDigitalPhotos.net |
Attached
is a letter with recommended tests for your
provider to consider. If
you are not a Los Angeles County resident we
still encourage you to see a medical provider
and obtain testing.
We would appreciate if you could share
your results with us.
Results can be emailed to [email protected]
or faxed to 213-482-4856. The
attachment with the letter includes a list of
recommended lab tests for health care
providers to consider doing with patients who they have/or had two or more of the
following sympoms: fever/chills, cough,
shortness of breath and/or muscle aches since
the conference ended. A .pdf
file containing the complete attached letter is
here.
A
new Los
Angeles Times
story released tonight says the L.A.
County Public Health Department has identified 170
people who fell ill at the event.
Government
health officials continue to digest information
they have collected in a survey of conference
attendees (show organizer Oversee.net
provided officials with the contact lists they
needed to do this). No other official findings have
been released thus far.
One point of special interest
has been whether or not
any of the models who were recruited to serve as
hostesses at the conference's closing event (the
party at the Playboy Mansion) had fallen
ill. This is of interest because the mansion
party was the only event of conference week that
most of the models attended. I have been
contacted by one of those models who said she did
fall ill however that alone does not prove she
contracted her infection at the party (the new
official letter specifically citing the mansion
event of course makes this a strong possibility). I forwarded her information to a
CDC/LA County Health Department doctor that I
have stayed in touch with since they started
investigating the outbreak Friday.
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