Subway Salmonella Hvittingfoss Outbreak
103 people have been officially counted in the outbreak of Salmonella Hvittingfoss linked to Subway restaurants in Illinois. Residents of 28 counties have been sickened, and the Illinois Department of Health (IDOH) has been updating numbers daily. To date the counties include Bureau, Cass, Champaign, Christian, Coles, Dekalb, DeWitt, Ford, Fulton, Henry, Knox, LaSalle, Livingston, Macon, Marshall, McLean, Moultrie, Ogle, Peoria, Rock Island, Sangamon, Schuyler, Shelby, Tazewell, Vermilion, Warren, Will and Winnebago. 26 of those sickened had to be hospitalized.
No single vehicle of infection has been identified, and Illinois Subway restaurants have voluntarily withdrawn lettuce, green peppers, red onions and tomatoes and replaced them with new produce. The outbreak is Salmonella Hvittingfoss, a fairly rare serotype of Salmonella that usually only presents in one or two cases a year in Illinois.
The State has required that food handlers at 46 restaurants currently associated with the outbreak to get two consecutive tests showing that they are negative for Salmonella Hvittingfoss before returning to work.
On June 21, Marler Clark filed a Salmonella lawsuit on behalf of one of the victims, a resident of Will county.