Health officials in Arizona, where at least 10 people are part of a multistate raw ground tuna outbreak, tested some suspect product for Salmonella and found, not the outbreak strain, but two other strains of the bacteria, according to the latest update from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). A search of the PulseNet database did not reveal any reported illnesses associated with the strains and a recall has been issued for the ground tuna product imported from Indonesia by Osamu Corp.
As of June 4, no new illnesses have been reported in the outbreak which includes 53 people in nine states infected with the outbreak strain of Salmonella Paratyphi B variant L(+) tartrate(+) also called Salmonella Java. Ten people have been hospitalized.
Health officials have not been able to identify a particular brand or supplier of tuna. Hoping to do so, the Maricopa County Environmental Services Department and the Arizona State Public Health Laboratory tested samples of suspect unopened ground tuna product and found Salmonella, just not the outbreak strain Salmonella Java. Instead they found Salmonella Newport in one sample and Salmonella Weltevreden in another.
Those samples were form two different lots of frozen ground tuna products product imported from Indonesia by Osamu Corporation of Gardena, California.
So far, the number of illnesses reported from each state are: Arizona (10), California (31), Illinois (1), Mississippi (1), New Mexico (6), South Dakota (1), Virginia (1), Washington (1), and Wisconsin (1).
