Officials at the Virginia Department of Health are warning people who have drunk smoothies at any Tropical Smoothie Cafe location across the state in the last 50 days that they may have been exposed to hepatitis A, WGRZ reports.
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A Tropical Smoothie Cafe is located on Prices Fork Road in Blacksburg.
Testing linked the illnesses to a strain of hepatitis A found in frozen strawberries from Egypt that caused past outbreaks.
The Cafe has stopped using the Egyptian strawberries at all of its stores nation-wide after learning about the issue.
The Department of Health says other restaurants and restaurant suppliers may have received the frozen strawberries. In a statement, the cafe said that their “food handling practices have not been implicated in any way”, and that they pulled out all strawberries “in an abundance of caution” from branches everywhere, not just in Virginia.
He said the company voluntarily withdrew all of the strawberries sourced from Egypt and found an alternate supply for all of their locations.
Anyone who consumed a smoothie from a Tropical Smoothie Cafe in Virginia containing frozen strawberries on August 5 to 8 may still benefit from a vaccine or immune globulin to prevent the disease.
Public health officials have suggested that anyone who consumed a smoothie from a Tropical Smoothie Cafe store in Virginia may benefit from vaccine or immune globulin to prevent hepatitis A.
Before you order your favorite smoothie at the Tropical Smoothie Cafe in town, you might want to know that the establishment isn’t now friends with the health department.
As per Healthline, there had been a hepatitis-A related frozen strawberry scare in 1977 that made federal authorities recall more than a million pounds of strawberries from Mexico. Symptoms can develop 50 days after exposure. “So it doesn’t matter what smoothie you had, that blender could have been contaminated by the strawberries”.
Hepatitis A is an inflammation of the liver caused by the hepatitis A virus.
Woolard said the best way to prevent the spread of hepatitis-A is to maintain good hygiene and always wash your hands after using the bathroom, changing diapers and before preparing food. People who have previously had hepatitis A or have been vaccinated in the past are not at risk. “Your eyes can turn yellow, your urine can become dark and your stool can become light”. Symptoms develop 15 to 50 days after exposure to the virus, which can occur through direct contact with an infected person or by consuming food or drink contaminated with the virus.
Individuals who suspect they have hepatitis A should seek medical care and take steps to prevent spreading the virus, such as not going to work, especially food service employees.
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Hepatitis A can be transmitted by the parenteral route, but very rarely by blood and blood products; the most popular way of transferring the disease is the fecal-oral route, and infections often occur in conditions of overcrowding and poor sanitation.
