Authorities say a norovirus outbreak that sickened hundreds may have started at an Ohio donut shop, which will soon reopen.
More than 200 people fell ill to the potentially deadly norovirus recently in northwest Ohio, and authorities think donuts were to blame. The Toledo-Lucas County Health Department pinpointed Mama C’s Donuts in Maumee as ground zero for the norovirus outbreak, which caused 214 people to fall ill.
Authorities think that customers who patronized the shop between last Friday and Monday were the ones who became infected, and officials at a nearby county are also examining whether norovirus cases in their backyard are due to Mama C’s. Despite all the chaos, Mama C’s is expected to reopen sometime soon with a clean bill of health.
The store has been shuttered for days as workers scrubbed it from top to bottom. Norovirus invades the stomach and intestines, causing inflammation that is mostly irritating and uncomfortable to healthy people, who generally recover in a few days, but it can kill the very old, very young, or people with weakened immune systems.
“I was texted Sunday morning about 2 a.m. or so that there was something going on. Monday morning, we came in and started the investigation and found out that at this point in time the investigation is looking to Mama C’s,” said Health Commissioner Eric Zgodinski, according to a CBS News report.
After testing some samples, the health department got three positives. CBS quoted one Maumee resident named Kelly Walkup who said the news shocked her.
“I was a little surprised, and kind of scared because we had just gone to eat donuts there the day before the news came out that the virus had hit. No one got sick, so we were pretty surprised,” Walkup said.
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