After an employee of Dogwood Southern Table and Bar in Charlotte, NC, tested positive for the Hepatitis A virus last month, the Mecklenburg County Health Department advised staff members and patrons who visited the restaurant over a two-day period to get a vaccination. Now Jon Dressler, the owner of Dogwood, is proposing that all restaurant employees in Mecklenburg County be vaccinated in order to prevent the possibility of future transmission. According to Time Warner Cable News in Charlotte, vaccinating all of the 426,000 restaurant workers in the state would cost about $64 million. “You weigh the expense of the vaccination versus the expense of any lost business you might incur,” Dressler told the station. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there were an estimated 3,050 acute Hepatitis A infections in the U.S. in 2012, and the rates of Hepatitis A are the lowest they have been in 40 years.
