A hepatitis A outbreak tied to imported frozen blood clams has grown to 37 illnesses across four states, with New York bearing the brunt of the cases at 27, followed by four in Pennsylvania and three each in Massachusetts and Minnesota. The suspect product is La Serranita-brand concha negra, or black-shell shell meat imported from Ecuador, and federal health officials say the safety alert warning people not to eat it remains in effect.
Case Count Keeps Climbing as Timeline Gets Murky
According to Food Poison Journal, the CDC's tally as of September 17 puts illness onset dates running from July 30, 2025, through June 23, 2026. That represents a jump from an earlier CDC accounting that counted just 30 illnesses in three states before the case count grew to 37 across four states. Oddly, the FDA's own safety alert has not caught up: it still lists an onset window of only July 2025 through February 2026, even though its content is stamped as current as of June 8, 2026, after a listed update of May 22, 2026.
Among patients interviewed about their eating habits, 77 percent reported eating ceviche, 76 percent ate raw or undercooked shellfish generally, and 47 percent specifically ate raw or undercooked conchas negras, the outlet's report notes. Investigators are still working to pin down the source or sources of the frozen clams, and the illnesses have been described only as potentially linked to the imported product rather than definitively traced to it.
What the FDA Alert Says — and Doesn't
The Cambridge Public Health Department reposted the FDA's warning advising restaurants and food retailers not to serve or sell, and consumers not to eat, La Serranita-brand concha negra shell meat from Ecuador because it may be contaminated with hepatitis A virus. That alert states the affected shell meat was distributed to restaurants and retailers in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania, and may have traveled further still. The product has already been recalled by dealers in New Jersey and New York, per the same account.
Consumers who still have the product on hand are urged not to eat, sell or serve it, and to discard it instead. Anyone who ate the shell meat within the previous 14 days and is not vaccinated against hepatitis A should contact a healthcare provider about post-exposure prophylaxis, the report notes. Freezing does not kill hepatitis A virus, which is why frozen shell meat can still pose a risk even after prolonged cold storage.
Conflicting Claims on Import Legality
Here's where the paper trail gets tangled. Food Poison Journal reports that a New Jersey notice from around late April 2026 was headlined around the idea of illegally imported concha negra blood clams from an unapproved source. But the same outlet also notes that New Jersey separately stated blood clams are legal to import from Mexico — leaving unresolved whether that legal-import statement was meant to apply to the Ecuador-origin product at the center of this outbreak or to blood clams in general. Neither the CDC's outbreak page nor the FDA's own alert, as described in the reporting, actually asserts that the clams were illegally imported, a discrepancy the outlet's report flags directly by title.
Historical Echoes From Shanghai to Raritan Bay
Clam-borne hepatitis A outbreaks are not new, and the current case is modest by historical standards. Food Poison Journal notes that clams from Raritan Bay caused 459 hepatitis A cases in New Jersey back in 1961, while a 1988 outbreak tied to clams in Shanghai sickened 292,301 people, making it the largest hepatitis A outbreak ever recorded. Those episodes underscore why health officials treat shellfish-linked hepatitis A with such urgency even when case counts remain in the dozens rather than the thousands.
For now, the message to consumers remains straightforward: avoid La Serranita concha negra shell meat entirely, and seek medical guidance quickly if you've eaten it recently and haven't been vaccinated. The gap between the CDC's newer figures and the FDA's still-outdated alert leaves open questions about exactly how the investigation — and the paperwork behind it — will be reconciled in the weeks ahead.
