ATLANTA — The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the salmonella outbreak linked to ground beef sold at Hannaford Supermarkets appears to be over.

Public health officials have confirmed that 20 people from seven states, including four from Maine, were sickened in the outbreak of a rare, antibiotic-resistant strain of salmonella typhimurium. Eight of them were hospitalized.

The CDC issued its final update on Feb. 1 – nearly a month after its last update, when the agency had confirmed 19 cases in the outbreak.

Six victims came from New Hampshire, and another six from New York. One illness was reported in four states: Massachusetts, Vermont, Kentucky and Hawaii.

Fourteen of the people sickened said they ate ground beef in the week before their illness began, and 12 of them said they purchased that beef at Hannaford stores between Oct. 12 and Dec. 10.

Hannaford issued a recall on Dec.15 of all store-brand ground beef with a sell-by date of Dec. 17 or earlier.

Hannaford Bros., which is based in Scarborough, has 179 stores in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, New York and Massachusetts.

U.S. Department of Agriculture officials said last week that federal investigations were not able to determine how the beef got contaminated by examining Hannaford’s records.


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