--- title: "Thirty-Seven Sick, Thirty Hospitalized, Eleven Months of Illnesses: The Hepatitis A Clam Outbreak Nobody Talked About" date: 2026-09-05T08:44:13-07:00 author: Bill Marler canonical_url: "https://marlerclark.com/news_events/thirty-seven-sick-thirty-hospitalized-eleven-months-of-illnesses-the-hepatitis-a-clam-outbreak-nobody-talked-about" section: News --- [All News](/news_events) / # Thirty-Seven Sick, Thirty Hospitalized, Eleven Months of Illnesses: The Hepatitis A Clam Outbreak Nobody Talked About ![](https://www.hepatitisblog.com/files/2026/09/Hepatitis-A-Claims-Outbreak-736x640.png)There is an open multistate hepatitis A outbreak in this country linked to imported frozen clams, and unless you read outbreak pages for a living you have almost certainly never heard of it. As of September 3, 2026, [CDC counts 37 illnesses](https://www.cdc.gov/hepatitis-a/outbreaks/clams-2026/index.html) in four states — Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York and Pennsylvania. Thirty of those 37 people were hospitalized. The first illness began on July 30, 2025. The most recent began on June 23, 2026. The suspect food is La Serranita-brand concha negra (black shell) fresh frozen shell meat imported from Ecuador, eaten raw in ceviche. FDA [warned the public about it in April 2026](https://www.fda.gov/food/alerts-advisories-safety-information/safety-alert-hepatitis-virus-concha-negra-black-shell-shell-meat-april-2026). Almost nobody covered any of it. **Eighty-one percent hospitalized is the number that should have made this loud.** Thirty of 37 identified patients required a hospital. For comparison, the 2016 Genki Sushi outbreak in Hawaii — raw frozen scallops from the Philippines — sickened 292 people and hospitalized 74, about 25 percent. [Marler Clark represented 85 of those people](https://marlerclark.com/news_events/genki-sushi-hawaii-hepatitis-a-lawsuits), including a woman who died. Here the patients are 6 to 40 years old, and severe hepatitis A is supposed to skew older. Whatever explains it — a large viral dose in raw shell meat, a community with high exposure, or surveillance that is only catching the sickest — an outbreak where four of every five known patients end up admitted is not a small event. It was handled like one. **Nine months separated the first illness from the first public warning.** The first onset was July 30, 2025. FDA published its safety alert on April 30, 2026 — 274 days later. CDC did not begin investigating until May 2026. That gap matters more with hepatitis A than with almost any other foodborne pathogen, because hepatitis A is the one we can head off after exposure: the vaccine and immune globulin work as post-exposure prophylaxis, but the window is 14 days. For essentially every person exposed before that alert, the only intervention we have was already months out of reach by the time anyone told them to worry. **Every illness that began after the warning has been left out of the warning.** Run [CDC’s own onset data](https://www.cdc.gov/hepatitis-a/outbreaks/clams-2026/timeline.html): 32 of the 37 onsets fall on or before February 16, 2026. Then there is a 74-day gap with no illnesses at all. Then five more people get sick — May 1, June 5, June 8, June 10 and June 23, 2026. All five began after FDA’s April 30 alert. FDA last updated that alert on May 22, 2026, and it still describes the outbreak as one whose illnesses ended in February. Three and a half months later, the agency page the public is pointed to and the CDC page carrying the data no longer say the same thing. ![](https://www.hepatitisblog.com/files/2026/09/Hepatitis-A-Claims-Epi-Curve-880x636.png)**The clams traveled further than the alert says.** FDA lists distribution to restaurants and retailers in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania. The [sick people live](https://www.cdc.gov/hepatitis-a/outbreaks/clams-2026/locations.html) in Massachusetts (3), Minnesota (3), New York (27) and Pennsylvania (4). Minnesota is not on the distribution list and never was. FDA’s alert allows that the product may have moved beyond the six states it names, and Minnesota is what that sentence looks like when it comes true. It also means the absence of reported cases in Connecticut and Ohio tells us nothing about whether the product got there. **Ecuador is not on FDA’s shellfish list.** Fresh and frozen clams, oysters and mussels sold here are supposed to move through the National Shellfish Sanitation Program. FDA’s [Interstate Certified Shellfish Shippers List](https://www.fda.gov/media/190879/download), December 2025 edition, covers shippers certified by regulatory authorities in the United States, Canada, Korea, Mexico and New Zealand — the governments that hold shellfish sanitation agreements with FDA. Ecuador is not among them. New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation [told shellfish authorities to be on the lookout](https://issc.org/sites/default/files/uploads/2026/issc_ny-illness-outbreak-investigation-hepatitis-a-virus-blood-clams_concha-negra.pdf) for packages of blood clams from Ecuador. That is the question I would put first to anyone at FDA: how does a fresh-frozen bivalve from a country outside the program end up in New York restaurants, ladled into ceviche, for the better part of a year? **The recall was done by the dealers, and the traceback is still open.** CDC reports that La Serranita products were recalled by dealers in New Jersey and New York. [The implicated meat was shipped to a New York dealer by a New Jersey importer](https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2026/04/fda-issues-alert-about-blood-clams-in-relation-to-hepatitis-a-outbreak/). FDA issued an advisory, not a mandatory recall. Thirteen months after the first illness, CDC still describes traceback as ongoing and refers to the source or sources of the clams — plural. And the interview data is not as tidy as the brand-specific recall suggests: 77 percent of those interviewed reported eating ceviche and 76 percent reported raw or undercooked shellfish, but only 47 percent reported conchas negras specifically. The brand may be part of this answer rather than the whole of it. **Freezing does not inactivate hepatitis A, which is why this is still a live risk.** A 16-ounce package that went into a freezer last year is as dangerous today as the day it was bought. That is the whole reason an alert from April is still operative in September. If you have La Serranita concha negra shell meat, throw it out and [clean and sanitize](https://www.fda.gov/food/foodborne-pathogens/hepatitis-virus-hav) whatever it touched. If you ate it raw or undercooked in the past 14 days and are not vaccinated, call your doctor or your health department today and ask about post-exposure prophylaxis. Symptoms — fatigue, nausea, abdominal pain, dark urine, pale stools, jaundice — can take two to seven weeks to arrive. **Quiet is not the same as small.** This outbreak had every feature that keeps a story from traveling: a specialty import rather than a national brand, one dominant state, a Spanish-speaking customer base, and an incubation period long enough that the illnesses never cluster into anything a newsroom recognizes as an event. There was no supermarket chain to name and no press conference to cover. Nobody was assigned to make noise about it. Meanwhile a virus we vaccinate against put thirty people in the hospital over eleven months, and the alert warning about it has not been touched since May. **Questions people are asking** **What food is linked to this outbreak?** La Serranita-brand concha negra (black shell) fresh frozen shell meat from Ecuador, in 16-ounce plastic packages. The clams are also sold as black clams, blood clams or black conch meat, and are most often eaten raw in ceviche. **Which states have illnesses?** Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York and Pennsylvania, with 27 of the 37 cases in New York. The product itself was distributed in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania, and may have gone further. **Is it too late to do anything if I ate these clams?** Post-exposure prophylaxis only helps within 14 days of exposure, so if you ate the product recently and are unvaccinated, call a provider now. If your exposure was months ago and you never got sick, you are likely past the incubation period, but any jaundice, dark urine or unexplained fatigue is worth a call. If you or a family member got hepatitis A from these clams, we would like to hear from you. The 37 people in CDC’s count are the ones the system found. In an outbreak this quiet, running this long, on a product this specialized, they are unlikely to be the only ones. ### Other Hepatitis A Lawsuits [La Serranita Concha Negra Frozen Clam Hepatitis A Outbreak Lawsuits](https://marlerclark.com/la-serranita-concha-negra-frozen-clam-hepatitis-a-outbreak-lawsuits) [Washington and California Hepatitis A Outbreak linked to Imported Strawberries](https://marlerclark.com/washington-hepatitis-a-outbreak-linked-to-imported-strawberries) [Hepatitis A outbreak - Strawberries sicken 27 in Canada and United States](https://marlerclark.com/hepatitis-a-outbreak-strawberries-sicken-27-in-canada-and-united-states) [Gino's Ristorante & Pizzeria linked to Hepatitis A Outbreak](https://marlerclark.com/ginos-ristorante-pizzeria-linked-to-hepatitis-a-outbreak) [Famous Anthony's Hepatitis A Outbreak; 52 sick, 36 hospitalized and 4 deaths](https://marlerclark.com/hepatitis-a-outbreak-linked-to-roanoke-famous-anthonys-restaurants) [Los Angelos Hepatitis A 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