ANCHORAGE — Alaska environmental regulators collected test samples from a Bethel facility that serves food, following a salmonella outbreak that sickened six people in the region.
State health and environmental representatives were in Bethel late last week to investigate the outbreak that sickened people between July 2 and July 13. Health department officials say all six people have recovered, and there have been no other confirmed cases.
In Bethel, officials interviewed the five affected locals in person and, by phone, spoke with another person from an outlying village who was among those sickened. That person was treated in Bethel, said Karen Martinek, a public health nurse with the state Health Department who was among those who traveled to the hub town last week.
Preliminary test results from the Bethel food establishment are expected later this week, according to the Department of Environmental Conservation. Final results are expected next week.
The facility emerged as a possible link in the outbreak, Jeremy Ayers, the department’s food safety section manager, said Monday. He declined to identify the establishment because test results are still pending.
“It’s not really fair for us to say, ‘Yes, we went here, we went here,’ “ Ayers said. “Then people suspect that they’re associated when in fact they may not be at all.”
Alaska averages more than 50 confirmed salmonella cases each year, with 78 reported cases last year and another 68 cases in 2014. Of those numbers, only two cases each of those years represented the southwest region where Bethel is located, Martinek said. The recent cluster of cases from the area is out of the ordinary, she said.
“That’s why when we see an unusual uptick in activities like this, we tend to investigate, send people out to the field,” she said. “Because this is unusual.”
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