April 2008

You are looking at the inside of a typical Chipotle Mexican Grill.   It’s a very clean-looking environment.   It’s always a function of local management if the interior is really kept clean and the service running smoothly.   To be honest, we don’t dine at Chipotles because we don’t like standing in lines period, and these places

Chipotle Mexican Grill is experiencing its second outbreak of the week, this one at La Mesa, CA involving Hepatitis A.   Fox 6 News reports:

The San Diego Health and Human Services Agency and County Department of Environmental Health are investigating six cases of Hepatitis A linked to a La Mesa Chipotle restaurant.

The county is

Hepatitis A is one of five human hepatitis viruses (hepatitis A, B, C, D, and E) that primarily infect the liver and cause illness. An estimated 80,000 cases occur each year in the U.S., although much higher estimates have been proposed based on mathematical modeling of the past incidence of infection. Each year, an estimated

Contamination of food by an infected food worker is the most common mode of transmission of hepatitis A in food borne disease outbreaks (Guzewich 1999). A review of food-borne Hepatitis A outbreaks in the United States found that in many cases the infected food handler either did not seek medical care or delayed getting medical

We spend a lot of time observing how various state, regional and local health districts handle the challenge of an outbreak, or the potential for one.  

We see the Idaho Central Health District has pretty well put away the threat that one restaurant worker caused at Boise’s Red Feather Lounge by working with Hepatitis A.