§ 26-6-2. Definitions.

     As used in this chapter:

(1) "Ambulatory surgical center" is as defined in Section 26-21-2.

(2) "Carrier" means an infected individual or animal who harbors a specific infectious agent in the absence of discernible clinical disease and serves as a potential source of infection for man. The carrier state may occur in an individual with an infection that is inapparent throughout its course, commonly known as healthy or asymptomatic carrier, or during the incubation period, convalescence, and postconvalescence of an individual with a clinically recognizable disease, commonly known as incubatory carrier or convalescent carrier. Under either circumstance the carrier state may be of short duration, as a temporary or transient carrier, or long duration, as a chronic carrier.

(3) "Communicable disease" means illness due to a specific infectious agent or its toxic products which arises through transmission of that agent or its products from a reservoir to a susceptible host, either directly, as from an infected individual or animal, or indirectly, through an intermediate plant or animal host, vector, or the inanimate environment.

(4) "Communicable period" means the time or times during which an infectious agent may be transferred directly or indirectly from an infected individual to another individual, from an infected animal to man, or from an infected man to an animal, including arthropods.

(5) "Contact" means an individual or animal having had association with an infected individual, animal, or contaminated environment so as to have had an opportunity to acquire the infection.

(6) "End stage renal disease facility" is as defined in Section 26-21-2.

(7) "Epidemic" means the occurrence or outbreak in a community or region of cases of an illness clearly in excess of normal expectancy and derived from a common or propagated source. The number of cases indicating an epidemic will vary according to the infectious agent, size, and type of population exposed, previous experience or lack of exposure to the disease, and time and place of occurrence. Epidemicity is considered to be relative to usual frequency of the disease in the same area, among the specified population, at the same season of the year.

(8) "General acute hospital" is as defined in Section 26-21-2.

(9) "Incubation period" means the time interval between exposure to an infectious agent and appearance of the first sign or symptom of the disease in question.

(10) "Infected individual" means an individual who harbors an infectious agent and who has manifest disease or inapparent infection. An infected individual is one from whom the infectious agent can be naturally acquired.

(11) "Infection" means the entry and development or multiplication of an infectious agent in the body of man or animals. Infection is not synonymous with infectious disease; the result may be inapparent or manifest. The presence of living infectious agents on exterior surfaces of the body, or upon articles of apparel or soiled articles, is not infection, but contamination of such surfaces and articles.

(12) "Infectious agent" means an organism such as a virus, rickettsia, bacteria, fungus, protozoan, or helminth that is capable of producing infection or infectious disease.

(13) "Infectious disease" means a disease of man or animals resulting from an infection.

(14) "Isolation" means the separation, for the period of communicability, of infected individuals or animals from others, in such places and under such conditions as to prevent the direct or indirect conveyance of the infectious agent from those infected to those who are susceptible or who may spread the agent to others.

(15) "Quarantine" means the restriction of the activities of well individuals or animals who have been exposed to a communicable disease during its period of communicability to prevent disease transmission.

(16) "School" means a public, private, or parochial nursery school, licensed or unlicensed day care center, child care facility, family care home, headstart program, kindergarten, elementary, or secondary school through grade 12.

(17) "Sexually transmitted disease" means those diseases transmitted through sexual intercourse or any other sexual contact.

(18) "Specialty hospital" is as defined in Section 26-21-2.

Amended by Chapter 150, 2012 General Session