http://www.app.com/article/20100206/NEWS/100206082/Mumps-outbreak-spread-to-Jewish-communities-in-Lakewood-elsewhere

MONSEY, N.Y. — More than 300 people have been diagnosed with the mumps in suburban New York as the nation's largest outbreak of the disease in years spreads.

A health official says 303 people in the Rockland County towns of Monsey and New Square have been diagnosed with the highly infectious disease. Almost all the cases are among Orthodox Jews.

Investigators say the outbreak started in August 2009 at a Jewish summer camp in Sullivan County with an 11-year-old boy who brought the disease from England.

That camper spread the illness to 25 others at the camp, ranging in age from 9 to 30, with a median age of 12, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

When the campers went home, they apparently brought the disease with them to Jewish communities in Lakewood, N.J., Rockland and Orange counties, the Borough Park section of Brooklyn, and Quebec, where numerous cases have been reported since September, the Journal News reported.

Mumps is spread by coughing and sneezing with the most common symptoms being fever, headache and swollen salivary glands under the jaw.

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