Case of hepatitis A prompts restaurant to immunize workers

June 18, 2005
The Record (Kitchener, Cambridge and Waterloo)
B6
Karen Kawawada

Nearly 200 employees at Moose Winooski's restaurant at Sportsworld in Kitchener, Ontario, are, according to this story, being immunized for hepatitis A after a trainee cook came down with the disease, but the public health department was cited as saying members of the general public aren't at risk.

Bill Siegfried, director of operations for the restaurant, was cited as saying the trainee, a teenage boy, worked in the outdoor corporate picnic area on June 4 and 5 before he started to feel sick, and that he promptly visited a doctor and was diagnosed with the liver infection.
Siegfried was further cited as saying the young man's brief employment consisted mostly of training sessions and cleaning, adding, "The closest thing he would've come (to cooking) would have been taking off a fully cooked burger from the barbecue with tongs."
Chris Komorowski, manager of food safety and infection control for the Region of Waterloo, was cited as saying that because heat kills the hepatitis A virus, the employee would have had to handle ready-to-eat food for the public to be at risk, and this wasn't the case.

Komorowski was further cited as saying the 187 Moose Winooski's employees are being immunized as a precautionary measure, but there is no need for people who ate at the restaurant to be immunized.

The story says that the young man got the infection after he ate some take-out food his mother picked up from the Mediterraneo Restaurant on University Avenue in Waterloo last month.

A food handler there came down with the infection, leading to a warning that people who ate at the Greek restaurant between May 4 and May 22 may have been infected.
Including the Moose Winooski's employee, four people who ate at Mediterraneo have gotten sick.