E. coli mystery remains
Source: Agencies |
June 8, 2011, Wednesday
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Time is running out for German investigators to find the source of the world's deadliest E. coli outbreak, an expert at the World Health Organization said yesterday.
German officials are still seeking the cause of the outbreak weeks after it began on May 2 and spread fear across Europe while costing farmers millions in exports.
In the past week, they have wrongly accused Spanish cucumbers and then German sprouts of sparking the crisis that has killed 22 people and infected more than 2,400.
Tests are continuing on sprouts from an organic farm in northern Germany, but have so far come back negative.
"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 at the WHO, said yesterday.
He said the contaminated vegetables were likely to have disappeared from the market and it would be difficult for German investigators to link patients to contaminated produce weeks after they became infected.
"Right now, they 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 five 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 forms for patients to fill out about their eating habits.
Meanwhile, the European Union's health chief warned Germany against premature - and inaccurate - conclusions on the source of contaminated food. The comments by 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 United States, raw tomatoes were initially implicated in a nationwide salmonella outbreak. Consumers shunned tomatoes, costing the tomato industry millions. Weeks later, peppers from Mexico were determined to be the cause.
German officials are still seeking the cause of the outbreak weeks after it began on May 2 and spread fear across Europe while costing farmers millions in exports.
In the past week, they have wrongly accused Spanish cucumbers and then German sprouts of sparking the crisis that has killed 22 people and infected more than 2,400.
Tests are continuing on sprouts from an organic farm in northern Germany, but have so far come back negative.
"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 at the WHO, said yesterday.
He said the contaminated vegetables were likely to have disappeared from the market and it would be difficult for German investigators to link patients to contaminated produce weeks after they became infected.
"Right now, they 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 five 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 forms for patients to fill out about their eating habits.
Meanwhile, the European Union's health chief warned Germany against premature - and inaccurate - conclusions on the source of contaminated food. The comments by 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 United States, raw tomatoes were initially implicated in a nationwide salmonella outbreak. Consumers shunned tomatoes, costing the tomato industry millions. Weeks later, peppers from Mexico were determined to be the cause.
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