Describe the three categories of outbreak settings.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

The setting of an outbreak is generally classified into three categories: food-borne outbreaks, waterborne outbreaks and community acquired outbreaks.
The most common outbreak is in a food-borne setting.  A food-borne outbreak is generally considered to exist if there are more than two reports of a similar illness from the same food source, frequently in a restaurant or at a community dinner. A food-borne outbreak may have a widely varied number of cases and has no seasonal distribution. While the food-borne outbreak is the most common, in only about 50% of the outbreaks is the food culprit identified, so a large number of these outbreaks go unsolved. The most common infectious agents involved in food-borne outbreaks are norovirus, Salmonella, bacterial toxins from Staphlyococcus, Campylobacter, Shigella, and hepatitis A virus.
In disease that occurs from a waterborne outbreak, infection occurs by either ingesting water contaminated by pathogens or by swimming in water contaminated by pathogens. Most often these outbreaks are common source types. The numbers of cases in these outbreaks can be variable and often unknown. The most common agents responsible for water borne outbreaks are norovirus, Shigella, Giardia, Cryptosporidiosis, and E. coli.
The most widely varied of the outbreak settings is the community acquired setting. This is because the diseases that occur in this setting include most all types of infectious diseases, such as respiratory diseases and gastrointestinal diseases. The diseases in this setting are transmitted most often by person to person transmission in schools, hospitals, daycare, nursing homes, prisons, and high density living areas such as military barracks, hotels, and even airplanes.  Some common agents that cause the diseases acquired in a community setting include norovirus, varicella, influenza, rhinovirus, parasites, and adenovirus