40 sick with salmonella

SANTA FE (AP) — Forty New Mexicans have become ill with a strain of salmonella linked to tomatoes.

The state Health Department said Wednesday cases have been reported from 10 of New Mexico’s 33 counties: Bernalillo, Cibola, Curry, Dona Ana, Grant, McKinley, Otero, San Juan, Sandoval and Socorro counties.

Several people were hospitalized but no deaths have been reported.

The Health Department is still investigating the source of the outbreak. Its scientific laboratory is testing a wide variety of tomatoes from stores across the state to determine whether they contain the same strain of salmonella.

U.S. health officials said lab tests confirmed illnesses in Texas and New Mexico as the same type of salmonella, Salmonella Saintpaul. An investigation by health authorities in the two states and the Indian Health Service tied those cases to uncooked, raw, large tomatoes.

Symptoms of salmonella include diarrhea, fever and abdominal cramps 12 to 72 hours after being infected. The illness usually lasts four to seven days, and most people recover without treatment, the Health Department said.

However, the elderly, the very young and people with impaired immune systems are more likely to become severely ill, which may require hospitalization due to diarrhea.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recommends that people in New Mexico and Texas eat tomatoes that have not been implicated in the outbreak. Those include cherry and grape tomatoes, tomatoes sold with the vine still attached and homegrown tomatoes.

Health Secretary Alfredo Vigil said no locally grown tomatoes in New Mexico have been implicated.

Raw large tomatoes — including Roma and red round tomatoes — were found to be a common factor in the illnesses in New Mexico and Texas. But no farm, distributor or grocery chain had been identified as the main source, said Casey Barton Behravesh, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention epidemiologist working on the investigation.

Other people have become sick with the same infection in Arizona, Utah, Colorado, Kansas, Idaho, Illinois and Indiana.

CDC investigators are looking into whether tomatoes were culprits there as well.