KANSAS CITY, MO. — The Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), public health and regulatory officials continue collecting data to identify the source of a multistate outbreak of Salmonella Saintpaul linked to ground beef. As of July 24, 16 people infected with the outbreak strain of Salmonella have been reported from four states, including New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Jersey.

Six of the 16 case patients were hospitalized. No deaths have been reported.

“All of the people who remembered the type of ground beef they ate and where they bought it reported eating 80% lean ground beef purchased from ShopRite locations in Connecticut, New Jersey and New York before they got sick,” the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention said. “Ground beef is the only common food people reported eating. Investigators are working to identify the source of the ground beef sick people ate.”

To identify illnesses that may be related to the outbreak, public health officials are using the PulseNet system, a national database of DNA fingerprints of bacteria that cause foodborne illnesses. The CDC said that bacteria from case patients’ samples are closely related genetically, suggesting that people in this outbreak may have been sickened by the same food.

“A routine FSIS ground beef surveillance sample collected in March 2023 was closely related to bacteria from sick people’s samples,” CDC said. “The investigation is ongoing to determine whether the current outbreak is related to ground beef.”

The analysis of bacteria from 15 case patients’ samples and one food sample did not predict resistance to any antibiotics, the agency added.