The children, whose ages have not yet been released, were from the Charnwood area of Leicestershire and had been treated for the infection in the last 2 weeks.
Public Health England confirmed the deaths and said it is working with environmental health officers after 2 cases of hemolytic uremic syndrome were confirmed in the siblings.
It is not yet known how the children contracted E. coli.
PHE East Midlands said E coli is a relatively rare infection, adding that good hand hygiene and supervised hand hygiene for small children are essential to minimise the risk of developing an infection such as E coli.
Not rare enough for this family and handwashing is never enough.
A Cheektowaga, NY pizzeria, Doino’s Pizzeria Bar & Grille, has been identified as the source of an outbreak of 3 hepatitis A cases according to the Lancaster Bee.
Erie County Executive Mark C. Poloncarz and Erie County Health Commissioner Dr. Gale Burstein announced Monday that an employee who handles food at Doino’s Pizzeria Bar & Grille, 2709 Harlem Road, Cheektowaga, was identified as being positive for Hepatitis A.
County health officials confirmed the case following an epidemiological investigation that was launched after the Erie County Department of Health received reports of three new Hepatitis A infections among Erie County residents.
The investigation included an inspection of the eatery and interviews of the restaurant owner and staff who work there. The establishment has been notified of the potential exposure, and the owner was advised to send any staff reporting of being ill for immediate Hepatitis A evaluation before returning to work.
Now, the ECDOH is advising anyone who ate food as a dine-in or takeout customer at Doino’s between Aug. 20, 2018, and Sept. 3, 2018, to monitor themselves and their families for symptoms for 50 days since consuming the food and to seek medical evaluation for Hepatitis A if they develop symptoms of this infection.
How does a food employee at a pizzeria pass hepatitis A along to patrons? Poor/no handwashing followed by handling ready-to-eat foods with bare hands is my guess.
Don and Ben talk a little bit about their op-sec, stuff their watching (including Star Trek) and Ben’s trip to Québec City. In the ongoing history of Canadian cuisine segment they visit the fantastic Quebecois dish, poutine. They talk Walkerton, the World Equestrian Games and non-potable water. The conversation goes into California’s make-meals-at-home-and-sell-them rules and some feedback about chicken washing. The show ends with a chat on curve fitting tricks, phages and ingredient-linked outbreaks.
Stourbridge News reports that Harriet Homer suffered kidney failure after contracting E. coli O157 during the school summer holiday and her parents Dave and Laura were left fearing the worst.
But the plucky tot from Norton pulled through after undergoing dialysis at Birmingham Children’s Hospital and her family told the News this week that she has been recovering well since being discharged.
The family believed the youngster may have picked up the infection after visiting a petting farm but Public Health England chiefs have stressed they have found nothing to link the incidence of E. coli with locations visited by the family.
One of the proudest things I’ve done is help train U.S. military veterinarians in food safety each year I was at Kansas State University.
I still carry the warrant officer badge in my knapsack.
Steven M. Sellers of BNA writes that Sodexo Inc. is facing a surge of foodborne illness lawsuits over undercooked beef its employees allegedly served at two Marine Corps bases in California.
Tristan Abbott’s Aug. 24 complaint, the most recent of three suits filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California, alleges he suffered kidney and brain damage from beef contaminated with a virulent strain of E. coli bacteria.
Sodexo, the food and facilities management giant that serves corporations, schools, and the military, says it provides “quality of life” food and other services at 13,000 sites across the U.S. and Canada. The suits questions whether it lived up to its mission at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot and Camp Pendleton in San Diego.
At least 244 Marine recruits were sickened in the outbreak of Shiga toxin-producing E. coli last year. Thirty were hospitalized, 15 with life-threatening kidney failure, according to researchers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The bacteria, known as E. coli O157:H7, can cause severe abdominal cramps, diarrhea, vomiting, and life-threatening complications in some cases.
Abbott was placed on dialysis and developed neurological symptoms from the infection, for which he received a medical discharge from the Marines in April, he says.
Investigators from the CDC and the Department of Defense found a “statistically significant association” between ill recruits and undercooked ground beef, for which Sodexo employees only intermittently checked temperatures, the complaint states.
“We recommended the Navy and Marine Corps retain lot information, address food handling concerns, and improve hygiene among recruits,” CDC researchers reported at an Epidemic Intelligence Service conference in April. The investigators also noted “poor hygiene practices among recruits.”
Sodexo told Bloomberg Law Aug. 27 that the source the outbreak remains uncertain.
Since early July, the number of cases of ehec infection has increased in Sweden. Analyzes show that the majority are of the same type and cases have been reported from several counties, mainly Uppsala and Västra Götaland. According to the investigation, it is a national ehec outbreak that has one or more common sources of infection.
So far, the ehec infection of some fifty people who fell in July could have been linked by molecular biologic analyzes of the genetic engineering of the bacteria. Another fifty-one people were also suspected of being affected. Among the infected are both children and adults.
Since the current type of ehec, O157: H7, has spread to different parts of the country, it is probably about a foodborne infection. Locally, the infection can also be spread from person to person via bathing water.
– This appears to be one of the biggest outbreaks of ehec we have had in Sweden. The germ strain spread may cause serious disease, especially in children. Together with the affected infected units and municipalities, the Swedish Food Administration and the State Veterinary Office, we are working to investigate the outbreak and, above all, try to identify the source of infection and prevent further spread of infection, “says microbiologist Cecilia Jernberg.
Elizabeth Shogren and Susie Neilson of Reveal write that William Whitt suffered violent diarrhea for days. But once he began vomiting blood, he knew it was time to rush to the hospital. His body swelled up so much that his wife thought he looked like the Michelin Man, and on the inside, his intestines were inflamed and bleeding.
For four days last spring, doctors struggled to control the infection that was ravaging Whitt, a father of three in western Idaho. The pain was excruciating, even though he was given opioid painkillers intravenously every 10 minutes for days.
His family feared they would lose him.
“I was terrified. I wouldn’t leave the hospital because I wasn’t sure he was still going to be there when I got back,” said Whitt’s wife, Melinda.
Whitt and his family were baffled: How could a healthy 37-year-old suddenly get so sick? While he was fighting for his life, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention quizzed Whitt, seeking information about what had sickened him.
Finally, the agency’s second call offered a clue: “They kept drilling me about salad,” Whitt recalled. Before he fell ill, he had eaten two salads from a pizza shop.
William Whitt and wife Melinda say it is irresponsible for the Food and Drug Administration to postpone water-testing requirements for produce growers. “People should be able to know that the food they’re buying is not going to harm them and their loved ones,” Melinda Whitt said.
The culprit turned out to be E. coli, a powerful pathogen that had contaminated romaine lettuce grown in Yuma, Arizona, and distributed nationwide. At least 210 people in 36 states were sickened. Five died and 27 suffered kidney failure. The same strain of E. coli that sickened them was detected in a Yuma canal used to irrigate some crops.
For more than a decade, it’s been clear that there’s a gaping hole in American food safety: Growers aren’t required to test their irrigation water for pathogens such as E. coli. As a result, contaminated water can end up on fruits and vegetables.
After several high-profile disease outbreaks linked to food, Congress in 2011 ordered a fix, and produce growers this year would have begun testing their water under rules crafted by the Obama administration’s Food and Drug Administration.
But six months before people were sickened by the contaminated romaine, President Donald Trump’s FDA – responding to pressure from the farm industry and Trump’s order to eliminate regulations – shelved the water-testing rules for at least four years.
Despite this deadly outbreak, the FDA has shown no sign of reconsidering its plan to postpone the rules. The agency also is considering major changes, such as allowing some produce growers to test less frequently or find alternatives to water testing to ensure the safety of their crops.
“Mystifying, isn’t it?” said Trevor Suslow, a food safety expert at the University of California, Davis. “If the risk factor associated with agricultural water use is that closely tied to contamination and outbreaks, there needs to be something now. … I can’t think of a reason to justify waiting four to six to eight years to get started.”
The deadly Yuma outbreak underscores that irrigation water is a prime source of foodborne illnesses. In some cases, the feces of livestock or wild animals flow into a creek. Then the tainted water seeps into wells or is sprayed onto produce, which is then harvested, processed and sold at stores and restaurants. Salad greens are particularly vulnerable because they often are eaten raw and can harbor bacteria when torn.
After an E. coli outbreak killed three people who ate spinach grown in California’s Salinas Valley in 2006, most California and Arizona growers of leafy greens signed agreements to voluntarily test their irrigation water.
Whitt’s lettuce would have been covered by those agreements. But his story illustrates the limits of a voluntary safety program and how lethal E. coli can be even when precautions are taken by farms and processors.
Farm groups contend that water testing is too expensive and should not apply to produce such as apples or onions, which are less likely to carry pathogens.
“I think the whole thing is an overblown attempt to exert government power over us,” said Bob Allen, a Washington state apple farmer.
While postponing the water-testing rules would save growers $12 million per year, it also would cost consumers $108 million per year in medical expenses, according to an FDA analysis.
“The Yuma outbreak does indeed emphasize the urgency of putting agricultural water standards in place, but it is important that they be the right standards, ones that both meet our public health mission and are feasible for growers to meet,” FDA spokeswoman Juli Putnam said in response to written questions.
In addition, the FDA did not sample water in a Yuma irrigation canal until seven weeks after the area’s lettuce was identified as the cause of last spring’s outbreak. And university scientists trying to learn from the outbreak say farmers have not shared water data with them as they try to figure out how it occurred and avoid future ones.
The Patch writes that a bunch of Salmonella illnesses have been linked to eating food from a Costco deli in Issaquah, Washington.
The Patch reports that King County health officials released a bulletin today stating,
Since August 28, 2017, we have learned of seven King County residents who tested positive for Salmonella I,4,[5], 12:i:- infections. DNA fingerprinting was performed on the Salmonella bacteria from the seven people who got sick and was identical for all cases, suggesting a common source of infection. Illness onsets occurred sporadically during August 28, 2017–July 13, 2018, and a common epidemiological link among all cases was not established until August 2018; no single food item prepared by the service deli has been identified as the source of the illnesses.
Salmonella is crazy hardy. Sticking around in a deli location for a year, is notable though. Niches in equipment, floors, utensils could be good harborage spots. Someone sent me an outbreak report a while ago about a restaurant that had a really long Salmonella outbreak linked to drains and the environment (I think, I can’t find the post though).
Sequim-State Department of Agriculture laboratory tests found no traces of E. coli in products from Dungeness Valley Creamery, a raw milk dairy farm north of Sequim, after Department of Health officials linked two cases of E. coli with consumption of the dairy’s products.
Last Friday, the state’s Department of Health issued a press release that said: “Lab results recently confirmed a child under 5-years-old from Island County and (a) resident in their 70s of Clallam County became ill with an E. coli infection after drinking Dungeness Valley Creamery raw milk.”
However, representatives of the state’s Department of Agriculture said that results the following day showed E. coli was not found in random product samples from the farm. Escherichia coli (E. coli) bacteria normally live in the intestines of healthy people and animals.
Chris McGann, spokesman for the state’s Department of Agriculture who regulates raw milk producers, said the agency tested 21 samples of raw milk, with 15 randomly selected from retail locations and six directly from the dairy, and all were deemed “not found” to have E. coli.
Liz Coleman, communication lead for environmental public health, said investigators found unique strands of E. coli in the consumers and the common link was they both drank raw milk roughly around the same time from the creamery.
State health officials said the milk batch that allegedly held E. coli and infected the two patients was unavailable for testing.
Ryan McCarthey, Dungeness Valley Creamery co-owner, said, “They haven’t found any contamination, so I don’t have any reasons to believe our product is contaminated. I guess it’s going to be one of those unsolved mysteries.”
McCarthey said he disagrees with the Department of Health’s wording that the infection came from the creamery.
“We want to know if there was a pathogen,” he said. “We definitely want to do our best to control and mitigate any problem with product.”
The children, whose ages have not yet been released, were from the Charnwood area of Leicestershire and had been treated for the infection in the last 2 weeks.
