A New Taipei City resident who was suspected of having contracted hepatitis from a brand of frozen berries sold at Costco tested negative for the disease, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday.
CDC Deputy Director-General Philip Lo (羅一鈞) made the remarks following reports by Chinese-language media that a woman in her 40 was suspected to have contracted the disease from Costco’s Kirkland Signature Three Berry Blend.
Lo said that he contacted the New Taipei City Department of Health, who told him that the woman is a hepatitis B carrier and receives regular liver check-ups.
Photo courtesy of the Kaohsiung Department of Health
She was diagnosed with liver abnormalities in the past two months, and received a hepatitis A antibody test after receiving a text message from Costco on May 1 informing her to monitor her health after she purchased the product, Lo said.
The test appeared to display a false positive result, he said.
“Her test report showed weak positive for immunoglobulin M (IgM) antibody with a value of a little above 1.0, as the cutoff index is under 1.0, so she was considered positive,” Lo said.
“However, the clinic she received the test from was not a CDC-recognized hepatitis A testing facility, so the health department transferred her blood sample to a CDC-recognized facility for re-examination,” he said.
Lo said the new result was received yesterday, and was negative, with an IgM antibody level of about 0.3.
The local health department visited the woman to take further blood samples from her and her three family members, and took some of the berries to be tested by the Food and Drug Administration, Lo said
The CDC yesterday afternoon said that the woman and her family tested negative for hepatitis A antibodies.
As of Sunday, 33 confirmed cases of acute hepatitis A have been reported this year, including 32 local cases and one imported case, and the number is lower than the 89 cases reported in the same period last year, but slightly higher than reported in the same period three years earlier.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it received a report of one suspected case of acute hepatitis A on Friday evening, and the department is working to determine whether the case is linked to the Costco berries.
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