The Bear River Health Department announced today that it is investigating a Salmonella outbreak after identifying 21 confirmed cases in Cache and Box Elder Counties in northern Utah.
The department says it is actively investigating the source of the illness and taking steps to limit further spread. It has not named a food, a restaurant, an event, a water source or an animal exposure.
The release does not give the serotype, the dates people became ill, how many were hospitalized, the ages of the sick, or where in the two counties they live. It does not say whether the 21 isolates share a genetic fingerprint, which is what turns 21 cases into one outbreak, or whether the Utah Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are involved.
Twenty-one confirmed cases is more than half of a normal year for this district.
The state’s public health data system reports that the Bear River Local Health District — Cache, Box Elder and Rich Counties — recorded confirmed and probable Salmonella infections at a rate of 17.2 per 100,000 residents in 2022, the most recent year posted, against a statewide rate of 11.6. On a district population of about 203,000 (the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute’s 2022 estimates put Cache County at 140,289 and Box Elder at 60,607, and Rich County adds roughly 2,500), 17.2 per 100,000 works out to about 35 reported cases for the entire year.
The real number is larger than twenty-one.
CDC estimates that only about one in every 29 Salmonella infections is ever diagnosed, because most people who get sick never see a doctor and never give a sample. If that ratio holds in Cache Valley, 21 confirmed cases stands in for something like 600 people who have actually been ill. CDC also notes that it usually takes three to four weeks to determine whether a sick person is part of an outbreak, which means the illnesses behind today’s number mostly happened in August, and the count will move.
People in Cache and Box Elder Counties who are sick should get tested.
Anyone with diarrhea, fever and cramps — especially diarrhea that is bloody, lasts more than three days, or comes with a high fever or signs of dehydration — should see a health care provider and ask to be tested.
