Via The Gulf Today: Tennessee, Virginia report 13 E. Coli cases, 1 dead. This is certainly not related to EHEC, but I think everyone's a little more sensitized to such outbreaks now. Excerpt:
An outbreak of E.coli cases in northeastern Tennessee and southwestern Virginia has sickened 13 people and resulted in the death of a young child, public health officials said on Friday.
Virginia has two confirmed cases of the E.coli strain O157:H7, which can cause severe illness - particularly in young children and the elderly. The same strain caused a 1993 E.coli outbreak that killed four people who ate tainted hamburgers from the Jack in the Box fast-food chain.
Both Virginia cases affected children who had close contact with each other, and one of those children died, said Maureen Dempsey, a Virginia Public Health Department deputy chief.
Dempsey declined to confirm the age and sex of each of the children, but local media reported a 2-year-old girl from Dryden, Virginia, died on Sunday and her brother, who was also infected, was released from a hospital a few days later.
Northeastern Tennessee has 11 laboratory-confirmed cases of E.coli since June 1, said David Kirschke, medical director of the Northeast Tennessee Regional Health Office.
“That’s as many cases as we had all of last year,” he said.
Three cases were O157:H7, and the remainder other strains in a category known as non-O157, he said.
Kirschke said no link has been made between the Virginia and Tennessee cases.
“We’re not even sure if our cases are linked with each other,” he said, adding the Tennessee O157:H7 strains also are being genetically fingerprinted to see if they are from a single source.
Still, Kirschke said health officials are treating the cases as an outbreak due to their large number, their close proximity and the short time frame of their appearance.
“It seems too coincidental to have this many cases in a week,” he said.
