The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention typically coordinates between 17 and 36 investigations of foodborne illnesses involving multiple states each week.
A report is posted weekly, but does not include any information about where the outbreaks are occurring, what foods are involved, or how many patients have been identified.
To identify an outbreak, there must be two or more people infected with the same strain of a pathogen. This can be done by Whole Genome Sequencing of samples collected from patients. Another way outbreaks can be identified is by linking people to a single source of a pathogen.
This week the agency is working on 21 outbreaks.
The pathogens involved in the outbreaks are:
Campylobacter with two outbreaks;
E. coli with four outbreaks;
Listeria with four outbreaks; and
Salmonella with 11 outbreaks.
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