An outbreak of E. coli O157:H7 infections has grown to 50 patients, up from 35 reported by the Food and Drug Administration a week ago.
The FDA and USDA are investigating “ready-to-eat multi-ingredient chicken wraps” as the cause. Neither agency has reported what brand is involved or what region in which the wraps were sold.
The FDA claims that the wraps “were proactively removed from the market before the link to the outbreak was confirmed,” are past shelf life, and that the agencies are now looking at “possible ingredient level contamination.”
The USDA is involved in the investigation because it has jurisdiction over poultry. The FDA is responsible for the rest of the ingredients. The USDA reports that it is working to determine whether the chicken was used in other products.
FDA investigators have initiated traceback, onsite inspection and sample testing, but the agency has not revealed what food is being traced, what locations are being inspected or what is being tested.
As is its practice, the FDA is not reporting any information about the patients, including their ages or where they live. The FDA first reported the outbreak on Sept. 23.
There are likely many more sick people in the outbreak than the official count shows at this time. This is because some people do not seek medical attention and others are not specifically tested for E. coli. The CDC estimates that for every confirmed patient in an E. coli outbreak, 26 go undetected.
In other outbreak news, for an outbreak of E. coli O26:H11 traced to Sierra Nevada Graziers grass-fed raw milk cheeses, the FDA has initiated sample collection, but it is not reporting what is being sampled.
State and local public health officials are interviewing ill people or their caregivers about the foods they ate in the week before they got sick. Of the nine people interviewed so far, all nine in this outbreak reported consuming Sierra Nevada Graziers grass-fed raw milk cheese.
According to the CDC the outbreak has sickened 13 people with eight requiring hospitalization. No deaths have been confirmed. Three of the patients have developed hemolytic uremic syndrome, which causes kidney failure and sometimes brain damage and death. More than half of the sick people in this outbreak are children 5 years old and younger. The sick people are spread across nine states. The FDA first reported the outbreak on Sept. 25.
Updates on other outbreaks
For an outbreak of Listeria monocytogenes infections, the FDA has initiated sample collection but the agency is not reveling what is being sampled. The source of the pathogen has not yet been determined.
The outbreak has sickened 11 people, but the FDA is not reporting their ages or where they live. The agency first posted the outbreak on Sept. 30.
For another outbreak of Listeria monocytogenes, the patient count has increased to 46, up from 44 a week ago. The FDA is not reporting the patients’ ages or where they live. FDA inspectors have begun traceback efforts, but the agency has not revealed what food is being traced. The FDA first posted the outbreak on Sept. 23.
