E. coli outbreak: EU proposes 150m euros to aid farmer

The European Commission has proposed a 150m euro (£134m; $220m) aid package to help farmers whose products have been hit by the current E. coli outbreak.

Producers of salad vegetables have seen sales plummet in the outbreak, which has killed 22 people and sickened more than 2,400.

EU agriculture ministers are holding crisis talks in Luxembourg.

The EU health commissioner said the outbreak was limited to north Germany and did not need Europe-wide controls.

John Dalli also warned against releasing unproven information on the outbreak, saying it had spread fear and adversely affected farm producers.

What a good positive step. 

News: European E.coli outbreak updates

Germany’s E. coli outbreak killed another patient, bringing the death tally to 23, and sickened 96 more people as officials continued to search for a source.

As many as 674 people have developed a life-threatening complication from E. coli in Europe out of the 2,429 who have been stricken since May 2, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control said today.

German authorities came under fire for being too quick to point to a cause for the second time since the infections began a month ago. France, the European Union’s largest agricultural grower, will back a plan to compensate producers hurt by the outbreak, which has decimated consumer demand for vegetables and pointed to shortcomings in the 27-nation bloc’s food safety system, Agriculture Minister Bruno Le Maire said.

“There has been a failure, there has been a great failure, and we have to take that into account and try to improve our safety system so that it will never happen again,” Le Maire said in an interview in London today.

German officials initially blamed Spanish cucumbers. Two days ago, they said sprouts from an organic farm near the town of Uelzen played a role in the outbreak. Yesterday, authorities in Lower Saxony state said initial tests from the farm showed no evidence of the bacteria.

European Health Commissioner John Dalli, speaking at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, emphasized the need to “reduce unnecessary fears” by communicating facts that are based on science rather than speculation.

 WHO: Time running out to solve E. coli outbreak

An expert at the World Health Organization says time is running out for German investigators to find the source of the world’s deadliest E. coli outbreak, which has spread fear across Europe and cost farmers millions in exports.

German officials are still seeking the cause of the outbreak weeks after it began May 2. In the last week, they have wrongly accused Spanish cucumbers and then German sprouts of sparking the crisis that has killed 22 people and infected over 2,400.

“If we don’t know the likely culprit in a week’s time, we may never know the cause,” Dr. Guenael Rodier, director of communicable diseases expert at WHO, told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

He said the contaminated vegetables have likely disappeared from the market and it would be difficult for German investigators to link patients to contaminated produce weeks after they first became infected.

“Right now, (Germans) are interviewing people about foods they ate about a month ago,” he said. “It’s very hard to know how accurate that information is.”

Without more details about what exact foods link sick patients, Rodier said it would be very difficult to narrow down the cause.

“The final proof will come from the lab,” he said. “But first you need the epidemiological link to the suspected food.”

Other experts issued harsher criticism of the German investigation and wondered why it was taking so long to identify the source.

“If you gave us 200 cases and 5 days, we should be able to solve this outbreak,” said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, whose team has contained numerous food-borne outbreaks in the United States.

Osterholm described the German effort as “erratic” and “a disaster” and said officials should have done more detailed patient interviews as soon as the epidemic began.

The medical director of Berlin’s Charite Hospitals, Ulrich Frei, said it took the national disease control center weeks to send his hospital questionnaires for E.coli patients to fill out about their eating habits.

Osterholm said the Germans should have been able to trace cases of illness to infected produce by now and that tests on current produce won’t be helpful.

“It’s like looking at camera footage of a traffic intersection today to see what caused an accident three weeks ago,” he said.

“This is an outbreak response that is not being led by the data,” he added. “Solving an outbreak like this is difficult, but it’s not an impossible task.”

On Tuesday, the EU health chief warned Germany against premature — and inaccurate — conclusions on the source of contaminated food. The comments by EU health chief John Dalli came only a day after he had defended the German investigators, saying they were under extreme pressure.

Dalli told the EU parliament in Strasbourg that information must be scientifically sound and foolproof before it becomes public.

In outbreaks, it is not unusual for certain foods to be suspected at first, then ruled out. In 2008 in the U.S., raw tomatoes were initially implicated in a nationwide salmonella outbreak. Consumers shunned tomatoes, costing the tomato industry millions. Weeks later, jalapeno peppers grown in Mexico were determined to be the cause.

In the current E. coli outbreak, tests are continuing on sprouts from an organic farm in northern Germany, but have so far come back negative,

But Rodier said that doesn’t necessarily exonerate the vegetables.

“Just because tests are negative doesn’t mean you can rule them out,” he said. “The bacteria could have been in just one batch of contaminated food and by the time you collect specimens from the samples that are left, it could be gone.”

He said food-borne outbreaks are difficult to contain because they involve multiple industries, government departments and in Germany’s case, several layers of bureaucracy to report numbers. That results in a slight reporting delay, which makes it harder for experts to know whether an outbreak is peaking or not.

The outbreak has killed 22 people — 21 in Germany and one in Sweden.

Germany’s national disease control center, the Robert Koch Institute, on Tuesday raised the number of infections in Germany to 2,325, with another 100 cases in 10 other European countries and the United States. The number of victims hospitalized in intensive care with a rare, serious complication that may lead to kidney failure rose by 12 to 642.

The institute said the number of new cases is declining — a sign the epidemic might have reached its peak — but added it was not certain whether that decrease will continue.

In a major difference from other E. coli outbreaks, women — who tend to eat more fresh produce — are by far the most affected this time. The majority of the victims in Germany are between 20 and 50 years old and tend to be highly educated, very fit, and lead healthy lifestyles, investigators said.

“What do they have in common? They are thin, clean pictures of health,” said Friedrich Hagenmueller of the Asklepios Hospital in Hamburg, Germany.

I hope this gets solved soon. 

E.Coli Outbreak News updates

Germany scrambled Wednesday to pinpoint the source of a deadly outbreak of food-borne bacterial infections that has killed at least 16 people, sickened hundreds more and sparked a diplomatic squabble with Spain.

The mass outbreak of E. coli infections is the worst of its kind in recent memory in Germany. Since the beginning of May, more than 1,000 residents have fallen ill from contaminated food, including 470 suffering from a more virulent and potentially life-threatening reaction known as hemolytic uremic syndrome, which can cause kidney failure, strokes and seizures.

Normally, Germany records only about 50 to 60 cases of the syndrome a year.

In addition, a few dozen infections have been reported in Sweden, Denmark, Austria and other European countries, with one person dead. Almost all the victims had recently been in northern Germany, officials said.

German health authorities trace the outbreak to tainted lettuce, cucumbers and tomatoes and have warned residents, especially in the north, not to eat any of those vegetables raw. The E. coli bacteria are often spread through improper handling of food products, particularly those fertilized with manure.

However, researchers have been stymied in their attempts to pinpoint the contamination’s source. Ilse Aigner, the nation’s food and agriculture minister, told German television Wednesday that “hundreds of tests” had already been conducted but that more were needed to track “the delivery path” of the suspect vegetables.

German officials originally focused on cucumbers shipped from Spain as the culprit. Tests determined that some were, in fact, contaminated with E. coli. But Germany now acknowledges that a different strain of the bacterium from the one found is responsible for the outbreak.

The misidentification, and a subsequent ban on imports of Spanish produce, triggered an angry backlash in Spain, where nightly news broadcasts have shown grim-faced farmers watching their profits go up in smoke as they dump tons of cucumbers. Several other countries have blocked Spanish produce as a result of Germany’s erroneous announcement.

On Wednesday, First Deputy Prime Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba of Spain said Madrid was contemplating legal action against German officials over commercial losses estimated at nearly $300 million.

E. coli is a common bacterium found in, among other places, the human digestive tract. Most forms are relatively harmless.

The current outbreak is the result of a dangerous strain of so-called enterohemorrhagic E. coli. While infections usually affect children and the elderly most severely, for some reason adult women make up the large majority of those in Germany who have come down with the serious complications of hemolytic uremic syndrome.

Sad.

E.Coli Outbreak Kills 14 in Europe!

A deadly form of E. coli bacteria, reportedly linked to Spanish cucumber exports, has killed at least 14 people in Germany and sickened hundreds more in what experts are saying is the one of the biggest outbreaks of the kind worldwide. 

German experts and government officials gathered Monday for a meeting to address the crisis.

Health officials from several European countries including Germany, Austria and Russia pulled Spanish vegetables from sale and blocked additional imports out of concern the outbreak could spread.

Spain lashed out against the ban. Diego Lopez Garrido, Spain’s EU representative, said there is no proof that the contamination originated in Spain.

Germany’s national disease institute advised people in northern Germany, where most cases have occurred, not to eat raw tomatoes, cucumbers and lettuce.

The European Center for Disease Prevention and Control is investigating the source and scope of the risk. The Stockholm-based group said infected patients developed hemolytic uremic syndrome [HUS], a potentially fatal condition afflicting the kidneys, blood and central nervous system. 

According to the European health officials, the outbreak is one of the largest worldwide, and the biggest ever reported in Germany. Most of the outbreak has been in Hamburg, but cases of HUS also have been reported in Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands and Britain.

Spanish Environment Minister Rosa Aguilar said last week that it is too early to know where the contamination took place. The European disease center, an EU agency, said authorities in Hamburg found E. coli bacteria last week on two samples of Spanish cucumbers, but it was not clear whether they were contaminated at the source or during delivery.

Take Care everyone.