The Denton Department of Health — the site of your

The Denton Department of Health — the site of your internship — has been abuzz with activity concerning an outbreak of unusual instances of pneumonia deaths among patients in the Denton General Hospital. Your supervisor, Dr. Rodriguez, gives you an assignment: acquaint yourself with the Department’s surveillance and reporting systems and collect all available information about this outbreak. Upon poring through the journals in the Department’s library, you learn a lot of information about disease surveillance. In Denton, all hospitals, physicians, and laboratories are required to report any suspicious symptoms that could pose a potential health risk to the general public. These reports provide the valuable clinical and demographic data the Department needs for monitoring disease trends and public health intervention. Your first thought is COVID-19, but the patients test negative for COVID-19. Your next suspicion is COVID’s close cousin, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). You decide to look for the following background information on the internet: Getting information from books and the internet is fine, but Dr. Rodriguez tells you that nothing beats fieldwork. She directs you to visit the Denton General Hospital to do the preliminary work for the outbreak investigation. Data Collection Infectious Ward of the Denton General Hospital You begin your detective work with the infectious disease ward of the Denton General Hospital. You start by reviewing the charts of patients who died from the mysterious disease. The administrator at the intake office tells you that they suspect that this is SARS, but the hospital has not yet received the materials to conduct diagnostic tests that could confirm these suspicions. You decide to list with the names of the patients who have died from the mysterious disease, their symptoms upon admission to the hospital, symptom duration and if any patient family members became sick as well. You end up reviewing 12 charts of the patients who seem to have died from the same disease. Six persons were 60 and older, 4 persons were in the age range of 25 to 50, and 2 were children (4 and 12 years old). As you review the charts, you suddenly realize that all of the patients who died from the disease also happened to have the same street address and lived in the Woodlands Apartment Complex. You decide to proceed by going over to their place of residence. Woodlands Apartment Complex You arrive at the Woodlands Apartment Complex and speak to Mr. Smith, one of the complex managers. Mr. Smith tells you that one tragedy after another has struck this set of buildings and people of all ages, young and old, are coming down with a severe flu and are dying. People are panicking and hardly anybody has left the building over the last three days. He has received 100 phone calls from tenants about breaking rent contracts. (The complex contains 200 apartments and serves a total of 600 residents.) Aside from those persons who have already passed away, there are 70 other people who have come down with similar respiratory flu-like symptoms. Most of these individuals were hospitalized at the nearby Denton General Hospital. You take down the names of these people who reported being affected with flu-like symptoms and race back to the Department of Health. Data Analysis Back at the Department of Health: You suspect that you have an outbreak of SARS on your hands. Before going any further with your investigation, you need to get guidance from your supervisor. Dr. Rodriguez compliments you on the job well done and outlines the following steps of the outbreak investigation to aid your work: Define the epidemic- Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) Define the “numerator” (cases) Define the “denominator” (population at risk for developing disease) Calculate attack rates Examine the distribution of cases by person, place, and time Look for combinations (interactions) of relevant variables Develop hypotheses based on the following: Existing knowledge (if any) of the disease Analogy to diseases of known etiology Test hypotheses Further analyze existing data utilizing an appropriate study design Collect additional data Recommend control measures You return to your modest cubicle at the DOH and eagerly embark upon the first steps of an outbreak investigation: descriptive analysis. The epidemic should be characterized using the criteria in the case definition. NOTE: Despite your hard work, no case definitions are perfect because of possible case misclassification. For instance, a diagnostic test may show that a person has the disease when in fact they do not (false positives), or conversely, that a person is free of disease when in fact he or she is truly infected (false negatives). It is very important to have reliable and valid diagnostic tools to decrease the number of false positives and false negatives. The costs of misdiagnosing a case and delaying the appropriate treatment, especially in the case of such a deadly infection as SARS, can be substantial. QUESTION 1: Based on what you just have learned, how would you go about preparing a case definition for this outbreak in Denton? (THIS IS A MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTION) A. Compile a table of symptoms from all suspected SARS cases and from patients with other diagnosed respiratory illnesses, then provide information in terms of person, place, and time. B. Compile a table of symptoms of all patients who were admitted to the hospital during the same time that the first patients were admitted to the Denton General Hospital. C. Compile a table of symptoms of all patients who were admitted to the Denton General Hospital over the last year and who lived in the Woodlands Apartment Complex.

******CLICK ORDER NOW BELOW AND OUR WRITERS WILL WRITE AN ANSWER TO THIS ASSIGNMENT OR ANY OTHER ASSIGNMENT, DISCUSSION, ESSAY, HOMEWORK OR QUESTION YOU MAY HAVE. OUR PAPERS ARE PLAGIARISM FREE*******."