Health officials to offer mumps vaccine to Barrington High staff, students
The Lake County Health Department will offer free mumps vaccines to Barrington High School students and employees next week in response to the outbreak there.
The clinic will be closed to the public. Only Barrington High employees and students can participate.
The exact dates haven't been announced.
The program is voluntary, District 220 spokeswoman Morgan Delack said. Concerned employees or students can also go to their doctors for vaccines.
The health department has confirmed four mumps cases and is investigating 35 probable or suspected cases in the Barrington area. Cases connected to the Lake Zurich and Libertyville communities have been reported, too.
"We have not seen an outbreak of mumps in a very long time," department spokeswoman Leslie Piotrowski said.
Information about the Lake County cases is available online at lakecountyil.gov/3875/Mumps.
Health officials are recommending a second dose of the measles, mumps, rubella vaccine for Barrington High employees and students who have received one dose.
Additionally, any employee who was born before 1957 should be vaccinated now, too.
Delack expects fewer than 10 of the school's roughly 3,000 students will come in for treatment because most already are properly vaccinated. She expects between 100 and 200 employees will seek treatment at the clinic.
Mumps is a serious contagious disease transmitted by droplets of saliva or mucus from the mouth, nose or throat of an infected person, usually when the person coughs, sneezes or talks.
Up to half the people who get mumps have very mild or no symptoms and therefore do not know they were infected. The most common symptoms include fever, headache, muscle aches, tiredness, loss of appetite and swollen and tender salivary glands under the ears.
Complications from mumps, although rare, can include inflammation of the testicles, ovaries, breasts and brain.
Anyone with symptoms should stay home and contact a doctor.
The health department administered thousands of vaccines for the H1N1 virus, also called swine flu, at impromptu clinics throughout the county in 2009 and 2010. That outbreak was much more widespread than the current one involving the mumps.