We certainly didn't mean to contribute to any level of mass panic with our urgent-yet-responsible (we like to think it was just hysterical enough) noting of a Hepatitis A scare at Ashton Kutcher's recent star-studded birthday bash. Minutes after hitting publish, however, the sight of more than a few civilians running past Defamer HQ windows, shouting things like, "We're all going to die, and that guy from Dude, Where's My Car? is the one to blame! No, not Stifler—the other oooonneeee..." before trailing off into the distance, led us to wonder if perhaps we shouldn't clarify the situation further for our readers. So to be sure, this celebrity outbreak is limited to the NYC area—unless, of course, any of the dozens of L.A.-based guests in attendance made their way back here in the ensuing two weeks, and chose to mingle with our general population. But what are the chances of that? Because accurate information at times like these is key, a Defamer operative has sent in the official statement from NYC Dept. of Health and Mental Hygiene ("NOT the Board of Health," as has been misreported), which we dutifully reprint for you here:

Mid-February must be Hepatitis A season, as nearly a year-to-the-day from the Wolfgang Puck scare that made rubber surgical gloves and gas masks the accessories of choice at awards season soirées comes another potentially devastating celebrity contagion. Ashton Kutcher celebrated his 30th birthday [ed. note: Again?] two weeks ago at a club in New York, but it's only just now surfaced that a waitress working there at the time was infected with the jaundicing disease, putting such luminaries in attendance as Madonna and Gwyneth Paltrow (and, to a lesser urgent-extent, Molly Sims and Rachel Zoe) at risk. Star magazine reports:

It's been a tense couple of weeks since Hollywood event catering watchdog group TMZ.com has made any headway in its selfless crusade to inform the entertainment industry's party-going populace about their potential risk of a Hepatitis A infection from partaking of the delicious hors d'oureves served at 14 ultra-secret Wolfgang Puck-catered events staffed by a Hep-afflicted cook.

Oscarless singing sensation Beyoncé Knowles may be OK, but that still leaves thousands more local revelers who may have been exposed to the hepatitis A-tainted morsels of beef tenderloin and mini crab-cakes circulating among various Wolfgang Puck-catered parties in recent weeks. Guests of Sports Illustrated's bash are still anxiously awaiting the onset of symptoms, wondering now if digging a chocolate-covered strawberry out of that aspiring model's cleavage—an interaction which at the time felt so, so right—might have carried with it grave, liver-inflaming consequences. Similarly, the cavalcade of CGI experts on hand for the Visual Effects Society Awards Diner have also been waking up in cold sweats, fearful that the delicious tuna-tartare-on-a-potato-chip that they insisted their spouse take a bite of might soon cause their yellowish dooms. Well, fret not, sayeth the L.A. Department of Health, in a letter sent to all party attendees (download it here): The chances you have contracted hep-A are incredibly slim. But if you did, you're shit outta luck, since Immune Globulin shots only work within 2 weeks of exposure. Whoops! Sorry!

While TMZ's valiant efforts to reveal the list of industry parties possibly tainted by Wolfgang Puck's hepatitis-infected pre cook have so far been stymied by the combination of a tight-lipped Health Department and the shadowy Hollywood Event-Catering Industrial Complex, their TV-based corporate siblings at Extra have managed to advance this important work: According to a press release, they've received confirmation from a publicist that Beyoncé passed on all the tempting—but possibly dangerous!—trays of hors d'oeuvres waved under her nose at Sports Illustrated's swimsuit issue bash at the Pacific Design Center on February 14th, the Party Zero of the ongoing hep-A pandemic that's terrorizing the city. She's safe! There's still no update on the status of Visual Effects Society awards banquet attendees George Lucas and John Landis, but TMZ's earlier story about the at-risk directors seems to have disappeared; hopefully, the site's warnings about the scare reached them before its deletion and they've taken the necessary medical precautions.

Hollywood event-catering watchdog group TMZ.com is all over the Wolfgang Puck Hepatitis A scare story like yellow on the jaundice-afflicted eyeball of a party guest who unknowingly gobbled down a tainted tuna roll, pledging that they will reveal the list of all 13 Puck-catered events reportedly worked by his infected employee (luckily, not the Governor's Ball at the Oscars) in a selfless quest to inform all potential victims of their possible exposure to the disease.