Customers of a Waterville deli might be at risk of contracting Hepatitis A after an infected food service worker there prepared food for more than 10 days in late December and early January.
The infected employee prepared food at Joseph’s Market on Front Street in Waterville while carrying the virus from Dec. 27, 2019, to Jan. 9, according to the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry.
The CDC recommends that people who bought deli items, meat or ready-to-eat food from the market between those dates should discard their purchases and watch for sudden-onset symptoms of Hepatitis A, which include fatigue, low appetite, stomach pain, nausea, dark urine and yellowing of the skin and eyes.
Hepatitis A is a vaccine-preventable, contagious liver disease that can spread through water or food, especially when the food is prepared by an infected person.
Symptoms of Hepatitis A will begin to show 15-50 days after exposure to the virus, and the virus can spread approximately two weeks before symptoms start until one week after they end, according to the CDC.
People who ate deli items, meat or prepared food from Joseph’s Market have up to 14 days after eating the food to receive the Hepatitis A vaccine or the Hepatitis A immune globulin.
The CDC recommended that people reach out to their medical providers to consult about treatment options.