USA – Clostridium perfringens is bug that hit South Peninsula Hospital in Anchorage Alaska

Food Poison Journal

CDC Clost perf

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Morgan Krakow of the Anchorage Daily News reported that Health officials have traced the source of a foodborne illness outbreak that sickened dozens of hospital workers in Homer to a single item, the Department of Health and Social Services said in a release Monday.

It was a Cubano sandwich, experts who investigated the incident think. In fact, it was probably the pulled pork inside of it, said Jeremy Ayers, section manager with the Food Safety and Sanitation Program within the Division of Environmental Health.

When investigating an outbreak, epidemiologists look at people’s symptoms and when they began. They start to form an idea of what dish was the likely offender. In this case a lot of signs pointed to the Cubano, Ayers said.

“[The] statistics that they came up with were pretty compelling that that sandwich was the implicated food item,” Ayers said.

Experts determined that the Homer incident likely involved a pathogen associated with cooked meat and poultry called Clostridium perfringens.

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