More On E. Coli

The BBC has some possibly better news to report: Signs that E. coli cases are stabilising, say doctors

The Robert Koch Institute (RKI), Germany’s national disease centre, said on Friday that in the previous two days there had been 199 new cases of the outbreak – bringing to 1,733 the number of infections.

The World Health Organisation said a further 103 people in 12 other countries had been sickened by the bug – all but one had recently travelled to or from northern Germany.

The United States said two of its military personnel in Germany were suspected to have come down with the illness.

Reinhard Brunkhorst, president of the German Nephrology Society, told reporters there were some signs that the outbreaks were slowing.
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E. coli is a bacterium that usually inhabits the guts of cattle and sheep and is mostly harmless.

Some strains, such as Enterohaemorrhagic E. coli (EHEC), can cause diarrhoea, severe stomach cramps and fever, though most sufferers recover within days.

However, a small number of patients develop the potentially deadly haemolytic uraemic syndrome (HUS), which attacks the kidneys and nervous system.

The bacterium sticks to the intestine walls, pumping out toxins.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday that 1,213 EHEC cases and 520 HUS cases had now been reported in Germany.

It added that 553 cases of HUS and 1,283 cases of EHEC had been detected globally.

So, almost all of the globally reported cases of EHEC and HUS are linked to Northern Germany. This is known as a clue. This means that investigators should be looking for the source to be in Northern Germany.

Further, it has been seen that a significant number of people who have been infected, ate at a particular restaurant and a festival in the Northern German city of Hamburg. That is also a clue.

So, what are the chances that both the restaurant and festival both bought their vegetables from the same produce company? That is known as a lead.

I get a little testy when I see what looks like an attempt to deflect blame when people are getting seriously ill and some are dying. So far this has gone from Spanish cucumbers, to European cucumbers, tomatoes, and lettuce, because they haven’t been tracking the sources. These things take time because you have to culture samples to determine if E. Coli is present, and then checking to see if it is the version that causes disease in humans.

Produce is constantly sprayed with water. If someone is drawing water from a contaminated well, everything sprayed will be contaminated. This is how it gets contaminated on farms that use irrigation, and is an obvious source for the delivery system. If the water is contaminated, then washing makes things worse, not better.