Restaurant Linked to Shigella Outbreak Cleared to Reopen

A San Jose restaurant linked to a Shigella outbreak that sickened nearly 200 people has been cleared to reopen, health officials announced Thursday.

Owners of Marisco’s San Juan #3, a seafood eatery on North Fourth Street, tossed all its food, sanitized the place and retrained its employees how to properly handle food.

Santa Clara County health officials traced a multi-county Shigella outbreak to the Mexican eatery, whose employees spread the contagious diarrheal infection by not washing their hands.

People who ate at the downtown restaurant over a few-day span in mid-October became critically ill. Marisco’s Yelp page lit up with complaints from furious patrons. A few filed lawsuits against the restaurant.

Meanwhile, the tally of Shigella-sickened people climbed to 194 and spread to neighboring counties. The county’s Department of Environmental Health re-inspected Marisco’s this week and determined that it’s no longer a public health risk. All employees who tested negative for Shigella have been allowed to go back to work.

That inspection report will be available in the coming week online. It’s already available through the county’s mobile app, SCCDineOut.

4 Comments

  1. Since they didn’t find an employee with the disease, is it possible a patron spreed it via door handle?
    Contaminated food? Where did it come from?

  2. “All employees who tested negative for Shigella have been allowed to go back to work.” That sentence implies that there are employees who did not test negative. Did anyone follow up on that? How many employees are now back in Mexico? BTW, it’s not Marisco’s, as if it were owned by someone named Marisco. There is no apostrophe. It’s Mariscos, the Spanish word for seafood. NBC’s tweet got it right.

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