A further 13 cases of shiga-toxin producing E. coli linked to the animal nursery at the Ekka – like the state fair — are being investigated, in addition to the four confirmed cases.

Although maybe it’s only eight additional cases being investigated because Queensland Health isn’t so good about this information thing; an additional five were announced yesterday, so who knows.

The latest update on the web came from Facebook – it says, two hours ago.

Two hours from when? Two days ago?

Those concerns are minor compared to the plight of the sick people; here’s hoping teachers, retailers, fair promoters and others will start to take animal-human interactions more seriously.

A table of petting zoo outbreaks is available at http://bites.ksu.edu/petting-zoos-outbreaks.