According to the CDC, the earliest onset of illness for a related illness was on or about April 27, 2023. Then, on May 21st adn 22nd, four additional victims became sick. This was followed by 13 more onsets up to about July 7th. According to the CDC< it is very likely the actual number of sick individuals is much, much higher. Given it takes about 3-4 weeks for an illness to go from onset to reported disease, for those who actually seek medical attention AND are tested appropriately, it is likely no more cases will be linked to this outbreak. That is, as long as none of the contaminated hamburger was frozen (freezing may prevent active growth, but it does not kill Salmonella bacteria).
The actual brand of ground beef could not be ascertained – likely because there were insufficient data points, which according to Salmonella Lawyer Ron Simon, is one of the most important reasons to seek medical treatment when facing food poisoning adn getting tested with a stool culture. The results of stool cultures enable heath agencies to identify the culprit and prevent further illnesses.
In this outbreak, epidemiologists interviewed victims about the foods they ate in the week before they got sick using a food history questionnaire. Of the 16 victims old enough adn available for the interview, 10 of them ( over half, or 63%) stated that they had eaten ground beef. These include 9 of whom recalled purchasing the ground beef from ShopRite locations in Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York. Seven of these victims recalled it was 80% lean ground beef while 2 wo also shopped at ShopRite could not recall what type of beef they purchased. Epidemiologic evidence clearly pointed to ground beef but there were insufficient responses to narrow the field to one specific ground beef product. In addition, in a routine ground beef surveillance sample collected by USDA-FSIS in March 2023, the same strain of Salmonella was identified. Again, there is insufficient evidence to point to the single product line that contained the bacteria.
