An eatery on Carnegie Mellon University’s campus closed Friday for cleaning after more than 40 people got sick after eating there earlier in the week.
Officials involved in the ongoing investigation by the university and the Allegheny County Health Department believe the people who got sick contracted norovirus after eating either soup or sandwiches at La Prima Espresso’s on-campus location. Two of the eatery’s employees also reported getting sick.
Norovirus is a highly contagious virus that can be spread by ingestion, as well as mere contact with an infected surface or person, said Karen Hacker, health department director.
“The question for us now is was it something from the food handling itself,” she said.
There may be more people who were infected but have not reported it to a health agency and are just dealing with the discomforting, but rarely serious symptoms of nausea, vomiting or diarrhea that can last two to three days, Dr. Hacker said. No one is known to have been hospitalized.
Officials involved in the ongoing investigation believe that the people who got sick may have eaten or come in contact with either the soup or sandwiches served there on Monday or Tuesday.
La Prima owner Sam Patti has not returned two calls seeking comment left for him at his office this week, including Friday.
CMU has not commented since Wednesday beyond a brief alert posted on its website Wednesday afternoon saying that 15 students had reported getting sick and that La Prima had pulled “certain food items” as a result.
Dr. Hacker said La Prima pulled its soup and sandwiches from its eatery immediately on Wednesday when it was told there was a possible problem and did some cleaning.
CMU allowed La Prima to stay open Wednesday and Thursday despite the growing number of people who continued to report they were struck ill.
CMU “made that decision” to let the eatery stay open on Wednesday, even though they believed then that there was a connection between La Prima’s food and the illnesses, Dr. Hacker said.
“We felt we weren’t at a place Wednesday where we felt we should shut them down,” she said.
“But I actually think [CMU] acted pretty quickly in telling La Prima to stop offering anything made on site” like the soup and sandwiches, she said.
But early Friday CMU said in a second alert that La Prima would close that day for “a thorough cleaning” and reopen Monday. La Prima’s campus location is closed on weekends. The decision to close was voluntary by CMU.
Reopening Monday is not guaranteed. Dr. Hacker said that La Prima will be reinspected before it is allowed to reopen.
The reason it was asked to do a more thorough cleaning was because it told the county on Thursday that two of La Prima’s employees had gotten sick, too, said Donna Scharding, the health department’s food safety program manager. CMU did not mention that in its alert to campus.
“In order for them to adequately clean, they decided to shut down” Friday, she said.
During an inspection of La Prima on Wednesday, Ms. Scharding said that an inspector issued one violation for use of improper equipment because the eatery — which is best known for its coffee — was using equipment to reheat soup that should have only been used to keep soup warm.
In this case it is a serious violation, she said, because “it is a practice that could have contributed to a food-borne illness.”
The health department does not yet have any samples of food, vomit or stool to test. No students have provided samples and most of the food on site was thrown out before the inspector arrived on Wednesday.
But the health department believes that the cause of the outbreak was norovirus based on the timing of ingestion to illness, the ease of transmission and the symptoms after illness that have been reported, Dr. Hacker said.
Sean D. Hamill: shamill@post-gazette.com or 412-263-2579 or Twitter: @SeanDHamill
First Published: April 29, 2016, 7:56 p.m.
Updated: April 30, 2016, 4:04 a.m.
