Fears of hepatitis A swirled in Somerville, New Jersey, this week, after the health department there reported that a food handler in a local grocery store could have exposed shoppers to the infectious disease.
New Jersey's current hepatitis A outbreak, which began in 2018, has swelled to 504 cases as of early November.
It's also part of an ongoing nationwide outbreak of the infectious disease, which began in 2016 and has led to 27,634 infections and 16,679 hospitalizations, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Hepatitis A, a highly contagious liver infection that's typically spread by coming in contact with feces from a person already infected, has killed 275 people in 30 states from 2016 through Nov. 1.