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News swept through the upscale lunch set this afternoon that at least one worker at Cafe Pinot has hepatitis A—and three other workers aren't feeling so hot. If you ate there recently, here's the fun part of the alert from the county Department of Health Services that was emailed all over City Hall (and presumably most of downtown's office towers) this afternoon:
To help reduce the risk of possible infection, health officials urge individuals who patronized Cafe Pinot (700 W. Fifth St., adjacent to the Central Library) from Friday, November 25 through Sunday, December 4 to contact their physician to receive immune globulin to prevent possible disease. The health department will open a public health clinic this weekend to provide immune globulin to patrons who may not be able to receive this from their physician.
[snip]
"The source of the illness among the four employees is unclear at this time," said Jonathan Fielding, M.D., M.P.H., Director of Public Health and Health Officer. "We will continue our investigation to assure the public is safe from exposure to the disease." The outbreak is one of several this year that has increased the number of Hepatitis A cases in the latter part of this year. Produce has been identified as the source of infection for some cases while others remain unclear....
Hepatitis A is usually spread from person to person via the fecal-oral route...The incubation period for Hepatitis A is two to seven weeks.
Symptoms of acute Hepatitis A include: fever, chills, muscle aches, fatigue, jaundice (a yellow color to the eyes or skin), nausea, loss of appetite, vomiting, abdominal cramps, dark-colored urine, fatigue and/or light-colored bowel movements.
Insert blogger joke here if you must. The county's notice says, by the way, that there is "no reason" to close the restaurant during the investigation. Feel free to disagree... Employees of Central Library also got the email, but they just guffawed since none of them gets paid enough to actually eat the food at Pinot. Well, except for the handy little takeout window. (That's former window, I'm told.)
Photo from LArestaurants.com