The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has raised the reported case count in an ongoing Salmonella Javiana investigation from 59 to 65. The outbreak remains active, and the agency has not identified a food linked to the illnesses. The FDA’s investigation table says it has started tracing the supply chain, but it does not list the states where patients live or how many have been hospitalized.
It also shows no recall, inspection or food sampling for this investigation so far. Newsweek has reached out to the FDA for comment via email outside office hours. The FDA’s public listing does not provide a state-by-state breakdown for this outbreak.
It also does not include patients’ ages, illness onset dates or hospitalization figures. Those details have not been made public on the agency’s investigation page. The case count may change as health officials identify and confirm more infections.
In a separate foodborne outbreak investigation timeline, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says it can take three to four weeks to determine whether an illness is connected to an outbreak. The FDA lists the food source as “not yet identified” and says traceback has begun. Traceback is used to follow where a food may have come from and how it moved through the supply chain.
The agency has not named a product, brand, retailer or supplier in this investigation. The new investigation is separate from an earlier Salmonella Javiana outbreak linked to jalapeño peppers. That outbreak ended in October after health officials linked illnesses to peppers from Sinaloa, Mexico, distributed by Coast Citrus Distributors.
The CDC’s final figures for that separate outbreak were 488 cases in 34 states, 65 hospitalizations and no deaths. The shared Salmonella strain name does not establish a link between the two investigations. Salmonella outbreaks are often detected when laboratories find infections with a matching genetic fingerprint.
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