Red Robin Worker With Hepatits A May Have Infected Up to 5,000 People

By Daniel Distant, Christian Post Reporter Friday, May 23, 2014

A Red Robin worker with Hepatits A may have exposed up to 5,000 customers who came to the Springfield, Missouri restaurant to the virus, according to reports. Health officials revealed Wednesday that they are distributing doses of the Hepatitis A vaccine to hopefully help all those who visited the fast-food restaurant between May 8 and May 16.

The Red Robin worker was discovered to have Hepatitis A on Tuesday but had been working there for several months already, the Springfield News-Leader reported. The virus can be spread through contact and by contaminated food and water, so to counteract that the fast food restaurant's employees have been given an immune globulin prophylaxis shot, which should prevent them from contracting it for three months.

For customers, though, they are being encouraged by the Springfield-Greene County Health Department to get one of the more than 4,000 vaccine doses shipped to Springfield to prevent an outbreak— and they're running out of time.

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"If the vaccine is not taken within 14 days of the time exposed, it doesn't work," Kevin Gipson, the county health department director, explained at a press conference. "So we are really on the clock, which is why we are doing this very quickly and we need your help to get the information out."

"Any time we have these cases we err on the side of caution. We never take the public's health for granted so we have scheduled a couple of clinics," he added.

The local health department's two-day vaccination clinic has been operating through Thursday and Friday.

Hepatitis A disrupts liver function and symptoms can include fever, fatigue, abdominal pain, yellowed skin, nausea, darkened urine, liver failure and death.

The Red Robin employee who was removed from the facility won't be able to come back to the restaurant without medical clearance.