Germany’s E.Coli Death Toll Rises to 10 as Officials Seek to Confirm Sourc
The death toll from Germany’s largest-ever E. coli outbreak rose as agricultural authorities said it still isn’t clear that the contamination originated in Spain.
The spread of E. coli has killed nine people in Germany and one in Sweden, the first fatality outside Germany linked to the infections, according to a statement released today by the European Commission. Another 1,169 in Germany and 41 people in Sweden have been sickened, the commission said.
Cucumbers from Spain tested in Hamburg, where 569 people are being treated for the illness, “definitely” have a disease-causing form of E. coli bacteria on the surface, officials said today. Still, they can’t find proof that the Hamburg outbreak is related to those cucumbers and are continuing to investigate.
“Clear results” are needed from a European Union investigation into the source of the E. coli contamination to restore consumer confidence, EU Agriculture Commissioner Dacian Ciolos said. Spanish fruit and vegetable exporters are losing as much as 200 million euros ($288 million) a week in sales as consumers avoid the country’s products, according to a spokesman for Fepex, which represents producers in Spain.
“It’s important that we should produce the results of the ongoing analysis as soon as possible,” Ciolos said today at a Brussels news conference. “We have to remain circumspect and not come out with suppositions without any proper basis. If we’re going to restore consumer confidence we have to provide clear results of what the source of the contamination is.”
Initial Results
Tests by Hamburg health authorities on the Spanish cucumbers didn’t find the strain of E. coli responsible for the outbreak although the cucumbers did test positive for E. coli, according to the Commission statement.
Deutsche Presse Agentur said 15 people have died in Germany, without citing anyone.
No E. coli has yet been found in Spain, Pia Ahrenkilde- Hansen, a spokeswoman for the European Commission, said today.
E. coli is spread through contaminated food and water or contact with animals, and can produce toxins that cause human disease. Cattle and other ruminants can be healthy carriers of the bacterium, which can be spread through fecal contamination, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. Infection can lead to hemolytic uremic syndrome, or HUS, a potentially fatal type of kidney damage.
Suspicion initially focused on Spain after Hamburg’s Institute for Hygiene and Health said last week it detected the bacterium in probes of cucumbers imported from Spain.
Seeking the Source
“Our hope, to find the source of the difficult complications regarding HUS syndrome, has not been fulfilled with these first tests,” Cornelia Prufer-Storcks, the Hamburg senator for health, said in a statement.
Spanish cucumbers didn’t cause the outbreak, Spanish Environment Minister Rosa Aguilar said. “Germany has confirmed that the Spanish cucumbers are not the source,” she said in comments broadcast by state television RTVE from Debrecen, Hungary, where she was attending a meeting of European counterparts.
While contamination happens in the field, the bacteria can be carried on trucks to a warehouse and contaminate other produce on a processing line, Bruce Hirsch, attending physician for infectious diseases at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, New York, said in an interview today.
‘Long Chain’
“The food processing chain is a long chain and there is potential for contamination all along the chain,” Hirsch said. “It’s a little premature to say it’s due to the contamination of Spanish fields.”
Spanish authorities suspended the activities of two distributors in the provinces of Almeria and Malaga that are thought to have shipped the produce, the European Commission said May 27.
Cases of infection by the bacterium have occurred in Germany, Sweden, Denmark, the U.K., the Netherlands and Austria, according to the ECDC. Most involve people who are from, or traveled to, northern Germany, including Hamburg, northern Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein, the Stockholm-based agency said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Allison Connolly in Frankfurt at aconnolly4@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Phil Serafino at pserafino@bloomberg.net.
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