The Broome County jail has been dealing with an outbreak of illness caused by salmonella since May 26. On Thursday, Sheriff Fred Akshar said operationally the facility is “back to business as usual”.
At its peak last week, 320 of the incarcerated population of 450 were sick from salmonella. That is about 71 percent of the incarcerated population. No staff became ill because they are served from a different menu.
“Everyone we identified as high risk – their medical conditions – was placed on antibiotics,” said Dr. Jason Croad, Assistant Medical Director for PrimeCare Medical, Inc. Overall, Croad said the situation is looking better and people are getting “much, much better.”
PrimeCare is the company contracted to provide medical care to the jail.
Broome County Medical Director Dr. Lazarus Gehring said he expected the last two hospitalized people to be released by the end of the week. At one point, 10 people were hospitalized.
“This is probably one of the largest foodborne salmonella outbreaks in New York, probably since the turn of the century [2000],” Gehring said.
Gehring said United Health Services provided significant support of testing materials, intravenous hydration packets and a separate ward at Binghamton General Hospital just for the salmonella patients.
“These [salmonella patients] are patients you don’t really want mixed in with other patients,” he said. Salmonella can be spread by consuming contaminated food or water but also through person-to-person contact according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
“We made the county jail into a hospital, because the hospital, you can’t send 320 patients to a hospital. We did this before, we did this during COVID-19, you shut the hospital down,” Gehring said.
“And these patients have an infectious disease and they’re going to get care and laundry and nursing, and you’re going to get spread within healthcare workers and it burns on and on and on inside of a hospital,” he said. “So, keeping certain diseases away from very sick people, by definition if you’re in the hospital you’re already very sick, is the way to do public health tried and true.”
Symptoms of salmonella include diarrhea, fever, stomach cramps, and vomiting. It can lead to dehydration and sometimes death.
Numerous food safety violations
The investigation into the cause of the outbreak is ongoing but county health director Olivia Catalano said salmonella has already been identified in chicken salad that was served on Sunday, May 25, the day before the outbreak began.
Further testing is being done to confirm it is the same strain found in stool samples from patients. The testing is being done by the Wadsworth Center, the New York state health department laboratory in Albany.
Catalano said the county health department team observed numerous food handling and storage violations as part of their regular inspections and as part of this investigation.
“Our team observed numerous instances in which potentially hazardous food was improperly refrigerated,” she said. “Specifically, we noted milk remaining on the loading dock for more than two hours, refrigerated and frozen foods remaining on the loading dock for more than five hours, frozen chicken left in the middle of the kitchen for more than three hours before being placed into a large skillet for cooking.”
Catalano described other “critical violations” including lack of proper handwashing, failure to properly clean equipment between use on different foods, not wearing gloves when required, failure to properly cool down food before covering and refrigerating it, and food temperatures were not checked during cooking, cooling or reheating.
Salmonella in chicken is killed when it is cooked to at least 165 degrees Fahrenheit. Properly chilling and refrigerating cooked foods can also inhibit the growth of several food pathogens.
Catalano said the health department never allows potentially contaminated food to be served when they witness violations. She said in those instances, food is required to be thrown out immediately. She said some of the violations were only observed when reviewing videos as part of the current investigation.
For example, the health department saw chicken salad being prepared in an 18-inch deep dish when it should have been in a dish no more than four inches deep. A worker mixed it with his bare hands reaching into the dish up to his elbows.
Food at the Broome County Correctional Facility is prepared by Trinity Services Group. The company prepares the jail’s food with assistance of a small number of inmates. According to its contract, all training is the responsibility of Trinity.
Catalano said Trinity was cited for some of these same violations in June 2024 and April 2023. The company reached settlement with the state Department of Health in those cases which included a fine and commitment to correct improper practices.
Catalano said the health department is now requiring that the entire food service team be retrained on food safety standards which is part of the state certification requirements.
Sheriff Akshar outlined where responsibility rests for the outbreak.
“The actions of the food vendor, wholly unacceptable,” said Akshar. “...and we are having ongoing conversations with the legal department [of the county] about how to hold the food vendor accountable.”
Trinity was chosen from several vendors that responded to bids from the county for the jail contract in 2018.
“We are in this position that we’re in today…because of the failures of the vendor,” he said.
“There are some mistakes that are unforgivable. This being one of them,” he added.
Akshar also acknowledged his responsibilities and said he may decide to change vendors.
“The buck stops with me. I understand that. I am responsible for running this organization,” Akshar said.
Sheriff responds to criticism
At the June 5 press conference, Akshar addressed allegations by Binghamton attorney Ronald R. Benjamin that he had been negligent and ignored the health of people incarcerated in the county jail during the outbreak.
Benjamin represents several incarcerated, formerly incarcerated people and families of incarcerated people who say they are among those who got ill.
During a press conference on June 4, Benjamin said he plans to file a class action lawsuit against Akshar and the sheriff's office.
Some of his clients said they or their family members were only given over-the-counter medicines to treat their diarrhea and other symptoms, that the ServPro staff did not properly clean or sanitize eating areas, and that incarcerated people did not receive bottled water the sheriff had said was brought in and distributed, among other things.
The sheriff denied all of the allegations. Benjamin said he has sent a request to Governor Kathy Hochul’s office asking that she remove Akshar from office for “deliberate indifference to the health, welfare and safety” of the inmates he represents.
Benjamin said another letter has been sent to the county legislature chair, Dan Reynolds. It calls for the administration of the jail to be taken away from the sheriff and an independent administrator put in charge.
WSKG has not yet confirmed that those letters have been received.
Akshar showed a video to refute some of the allegations. They showed pallets of bottled water being carried from a loading dock into a jail building then being carried around to cells by uniformed corrections staff. At another point, people in white protective coveralls and masks were seen in different parts of the jail wiping down surfaces and equipment using different cleaning agents.
‘Some people were very sick’
The CDC states that non-thyphoidal salmonella, the type in the Broome County jail, is the leading cause of death from a foodborne illness.
“The amount of patients we had on antibiotics, the amount of patients we had hospitalized, by history we’d have expected to see some mortality. And that number would be in the range of maybe eight to 12,” said Gehring. “I mean these – are talking about people who could have died.”
In 1987, an outbreak of salmonella poisoning took place at a downstate hospital. The New York Times reported that over 400 people became ill and nine died. The cause was tainted eggs in some hospital meals.
Hospitals, jails or prisons have large numbers of people in contained areas which makes it easier for infections to spread.
“The population of the Broome County jail and you look at the medical population is very complex. Diseases such as HIV, cardiovascular disease, joint replacements, a lot of things that you don’t find so congregated in the general public you’ll find here,” said Gehring. “And that puts them at higher risk and in fact, everyone we hospitalized was a high risk patient that had complicated issues.”
No one has died because of the jail outbreak as of the press conference on Friday afternoon.
“We know a lot more than we did in 1987 about the precautions, antibiotics are certainly different. Our main antibiotic was not used in 1987. It didn’t exist,” Gehring said.
He said the other factor was the quick communication and coordination between the jail medical staff and sheriff’s office, the county health department, and local hospitals.
Gehring said the worst of the outbreak is over. But he will not consider the crisis over for at least another two weeks, or about two incubation periods.
