At least nine people in Tarragona have been affected by an outbreak of acute gastroenteritis after eating undercooked razor clams contaminated with norovirus at a restaurant. The incident prompted the activation of a serious food alert through the European RASFF network and public health inspections by the Catalan government.
The Generalitat said that all control measures involving the operators responsible for marketing the razor clams had been completed and that the related products had been recovered from the market. The Public Health Emergency Unit in Tarragona collected samples from two batches of frozen razor clams at the restaurant linked to the outbreak. Laboratory tests returned positive for norovirus.
The contamination point has not been established. According to the Generalitat, the product arrived fresh in Catalonia from Andalusia and Portugal before being processed in the Ebro region and distributed frozen to restaurants in different parts of Catalonia. Public health services identified and withdrew all the affected products.
Norovirus can cause a sudden onset of symptoms between 12 and 48 hours after exposure, including nausea, vomiting, watery diarrhoea and abdominal pain. These episodes are generally self-limiting and last between one and three days, although fluid loss can occasionally lead to complications in infants, young children, older people and immunocompromised patients.
Health authorities and experts stressed the importance of cooking food thoroughly, along with proper refrigeration and kitchen hygiene to prevent cross-contamination. Foods such as eggs, shellfish and poultry can retain harmful microorganisms when they are not cooked sufficiently.
The Generalitat said norovirus is particularly resistant and can survive for days or even weeks on surfaces and food. It can withstand temperatures of 60 degrees Celsius for three minutes and 100 degrees for one minute. With bivalves such as razor clams, high temperatures reached on the outside may not be achieved inside the shellfish, allowing the virus to remain infectious.
The alert was published on the RASFF platform after the events, which took place in September. The Spanish Agency for Food Safety and Nutrition has not said whether razor clams from the same source were distributed to other autonomous communities or what measures may have been taken there.
Sources: El País Portada.