According to Mary Stroka, NLJ Reporter, about 40 Weston County community members, including some Newcastle Elementary students, reportedly became ill in connection with an outbreak of Salmonella at the school, according to a text received on Dec. 2 from Kim Deti, Wyoming Department of Public Health’s public information officer.
Two cases have been confirmed of people being ill with salmonella in connection with the national outbreak of a salmonella strain that federal officials have linked to cucumbers, according to Deti.
“We would expect more confirmed cases over time,” she said.
Not all test results are yet available and not everyone was likely tested, Deti said. Therefore, the department can’t “say for certain that they were all ill with Salmonella,” she said. Deti did not have a breakdown of the ages of the people who became ill.
“The main update is we can confirm the outbreak associated with your local school is a subcluster on an interstate outbreak that’s been reported on nationally over the last few days,” she said.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Nov. 29 that as of Nov. 26, the outbreak had infected 68 people and was reported in 19 states. On Dec. 2, CDC’s website indicated that two Wyomingites were sick. Cases in nearby states include 16 in Montana, eight in Colorado and four in South Dakota. According to the CDC, more people are likely sick in the outbreak than the number reported because people often recover without medical care and so won’t be tested for salmonella. It also tends to take a few weeks to discover whether someone who is sick was affected by the outbreak. Twenty-seven of the 33 people who have been interviewed reported eating cucumbers. Eighteen of the 50 people the CDC has information about have been hospitalized. As of this writing, there have been no reports of deaths attributed to the outbreak.
As the Department of Health suspected, based on its investigation, the federal investigation prompted a recall announcement for cucumbers, the state investigator said in an email to Newcastle Elementary Principal Brandy Holmes. The email was shared with the News Letter Journal on Dec. 2.
According to a Nov. 29 update on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s website, SunFed Produce voluntarily recalled all sizes of fresh American/slicer cucumbers that Agrotato, S.A. de C.V., grew in Sonora, Mexico, that were sold between Oct. 12 and Nov. 26. The FDA is working with other importers that received the cucumbers from Agrotato.