Suspected Shigella cases linked to San Jose restaurant up to 182

The number of people believed to have been sickened with food poisoning from a shigella outbreak at a San Jose Mexican restaurant climbed to 182, with new cases being reported in Marin and Merced counties, officials said Monday.

Health officials said that a number of the sickened were rushed to hospitals and admission of at least a dozen was done in intensive care units.

The contaminated food must have been served for at most two straight days, October 16 and 17.

Of the 72 people with a confirmed infection, 55 are in Santa Clara County while the remaining 17 are in Santa Cruz, Alameda, Marin and Merced counties, according to public health officials.

“Mariscos San Juan #3 restaurant remains closed”, said Allison Thrash, Health Information Officer at the SCCPHD.

Health authorities cautioned that the disease is ‘extremely contagious.’ The Santa Clara County Public Health Department recommends restaurant staffers to carefully and frequently wash their hands, especially after using the bathroom.

Shigella: Marler Clark, The Food Safety Law Firm, is the nation’s leading law firm representing victims of Shigella outbreaks. All Mariscos staffers were tested and the results are expected to be made public this week. Officials suspect the disease was spread by a contaminated food handler, but the food source remains under investigation. From a study conducted in 2006, World Health Organization reported that every year the Shigella bacteria causes around 165 million people to suffer from sickness such as severe dysentery and vomiting, a million of these people (mostly children from developing countries) eventually dies. Inspectors from the Santa Clara County Department of Environmental Health continue to investigate the outbreak.

Shigella infections can trigger watery or bloody diarrhea, abdominal pain, fever and other symptoms, the department said. Of the 182 total cases, 72 have been confirmed through laboratory tests. It was reported that dozens of people started to fall very sick right after they took their meal at the Mariscos San Juan Restaurant. On Monday, the owners of the restaurant could not immediately be reached for comment. Of the confirmed cases more than 50 are in Santa Clara.

Although the restaurant specialized in Mexican seafood and catered to Spanish speakers, it also attracted a culturally diverse crowd drawn from San Jose’s rapidly changing downtown and central city neighborhoods. It is passed from one human to another especially when a person that handles food doesn’t wash his or her hands after taking a dump.

A few patients who fell ill never went to the restaurant either.