Interhouse Ban Will End With Friday Breakfast

Beginning Friday morning. University Health Services (UHS) officials will lift the ban on interhouse dining because they have not discovered any new cases of salmonella since Sunday.

Dr. Warren E.C. Wacker, director of UHS, said yesterday that the state Department of Health laboratories identified a salad worker at the Central Kitchen as a potential salmonella carrier.

Charles J. Krause Jr., sanitary inspector for UHS, said yesterday he removed the infected employee from the line temporarily yesterday morning and has collected specimens of the salad handled by the worker to test for salmonella.

Krause said because salad workers are supposed to wear protective gloves and wash their hands in a sterilizing solution he cannot be sure whether the infected worker has spread the salmonella.

The ban on temporary workers will continue, however, until the state laboratories analyze all stool samples from workers in the Central Kitchen, he added.

Wacker said he is very pleased to be able to lift the ban on interhouse dining so quickly, though he believes students have been cooperating. Wacker, who is also master of South House, added, "even the students at South House, who have been most inconvenienced, have been very good about it."

UHS officials still do not know how salmonella spread from the Union to Winthrop House, but they suspect a student carried the infection, Krause said.

He added that he does not know yet if the strains of the salmonella bacteria at the Union, Winthrop and Kirkland Houses are the same, so he cannot yet determine how the infection spread.

William Littlejohn, manager of Quincy House dining hall, said yesterday. "Of course we're happy to have it back, though it does crowd us at lunch."