East Coast Shellfish Growers Association June 2024 Newsletter

CDC Improves Its
Website
by Robert Rheault,
ECSGA Executive Director
It seems as if every few years we
see an explosion of news articles
about flesh-eating bacteria, a
sensational topic that is irresistible
to members of the media.
Invariably these incidents result
from Vibrio vulnificus illnesses
caused by wound infections
contracted while swimming in
warm, brackish water. V. vulnificus
infections are incredibly
rare (156 total cases reported in
2019) and only 10% are associated
with eating seafood. But
notably, V. vulnificus infections
have a 20% mortality rate in
immune-compromised patients.
The go-to source for reporters
looking for information about
flesh-eating bacteria is the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention
(CDC) website where,
until recently, visitors saw that
an estimated 80,000 vibriosis
cases occur each year, and that
oysters are commonly implicated.
The fact that only 15 or so of
the extremely rare V. vulnificus
cases are linked to oysters got
lost in the confusing language
that made it hard to distinguish
the generic term “vibriosis”
from V. vulnificus infections,
so just about every media story
on flesh-eating bacteria showed
pictures of oysters and cited
“80,000 cases a year.”
When three people died of V.
vulnificus wound infections in
the summer of 2023 after swimming
in Long Island Sound, I
counted more than 47 breathless
news reports and watched in
horror as oyster markets in New
York evaporated. I arranged a
meeting with CDC press relations
folks requesting substantive
changes to their website to clarify
the rarity of the disease and to
emphasize that the overwhelming
majority of V. vulnificus
cases are wound-related. They
rejected our suggested edits. On
our Walk the Hill trip to D.C. in
March we brought up the issue
with our congressional colleagues,
and later began working
on a letter that representatives
could send to the CDC urging
the agency to make changes to
its website.
To its credit, in recent months
the CDC has overhauled its
Vibrio pages and they are now
much clearer and easier to
understand. I’d like to think that
all our hard work advocating
for changes to the website paid
off, but who knows? Maybe the
revamp had been in the works
for some time. In any event, the
improvements are noticeable.
For example, on the About
Vibrio 1 page, key points are
highlighted right off the bat:
• Vibrio are bacteria that naturally
live in coastal waters.
• About a dozen kinds of
Vibrio can cause people to get an
infection called vibriosis.
• People can get vibriosis after
swallowing Vibrio or getting it in
a wound.
• Vibrio infection can be serious.
Know when to seek medical
care.
In addition to the simplified Vibrio
presentations for members
of the public and the media, the
National Outbreak Reporting
System (NORS) infection and
outbreak data are now accessible
online in the NORS Dashboard 2
and can be downloaded to a
monster csv file for massaging
with your favorite spreadsheet
application.
—Continued on page 18
CDC/ JANICE H. CARR
Vibrio vulnificus infections
are very rare (156 cases
in 2019) and only 10% are
linked to eating seafood.
ECSGA Newsletter Issue 2 June 2024
Page 15