Philadelphia – A nasty little bug went national Thursday, with new reports of diarrhea and other unpleasantness from New Jersey to Utah, “the vast majority” of it coming after people ate at a Taco Bell restaurant, according to the CDC.
Federal officials said a specific source of E. coli had not yet been conclusively identified through DNA analysis, but investigators continued to focus on green onions served at the fast-food chain in late November – some of them supplied by a Southern California grower.
At least 58 cases have been identified by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in six states – more than half in New Jersey and Pennsylvania – and more people could still be stricken, as symptoms can take up to a week to appear. Including unconfirmed cases, 183 are under investigation nationwide, according to Philadelphia Department of Public Health spokesman Jeff Moran.
There have been three reported cases of E. coli in Boulder County in recent weeks. Chana Goussetis, a spokeswoman for Boulder County Public Health, said the cases occurred from Nov. 21 to 26.
Two of those who contracted the illness went to the hospital, while the third recovered at home, Goussetis said.
Goussetis said health officials have not been able to pinpoint the source of the E. coli or determine whether the cases are related. The victims didn’t eat anywhere in common and aren’t related, she said.
Hit-or-miss sleuthing
Health officials are waiting for test results to determine whether Boulder’s cases are related to the East Coast outbreak.
The actual number of cases nationwide could be far higher, as epidemiologists wrestle with the hit-or-miss nature of disease sleuthing. If someone doesn’t go to the doctor, the case is never reported to the government.
The 434 Taco Bells in New York, New Jersey and Delaware get their green onions from the McLane Co. distribution center in Burlington Township, Pa., as do some additional restaurants in Pennsylvania.
McLane gets the onions from a Florence, N.J.-based processing facility operated by Ready Pac of Irwindale, Calif., which buys them from California-based Bos kovich Farms, said Ready Pac spokesman Steven Dickstein.
He said no conclusive link has been made between the illnesses and Ready Pac’s green onions but said the company had stopped producing and shipping that vegetable as a precaution. He said the Florence facility, a sprawling beige warehouse with 1,000 employees, subjects its onions to multiple washings before they are cut and bagged.
“We’re scratching our heads about this one,” Dickstein said. “We run a very clean facility.”
But washing is not a magic bullet, especially with a tenacious organism such as E. coli, said Luke LaBorde, an associate professor of food science at Pennsylvania State University.
One washing reduces concentrations of the bacteria by 100 to 1,000 times, but a speck of manure might contain 1 million cells, he said.
It takes as little as 10 cells of the pathogenic strain of E. coli to make a person sick, LaBorde said.
The Denver Post contributed to this report.
