WHO: Time running out to solve E. coli outbreak

LONDON (AP) - 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. They wrongly accused Spanish cucumbers of being the culprit last week but had to retract when the cucumbers had a different strain of E. coli. On Sunday, they blamed German sprouts, only to backtrack a day later when initial tests were negative. The sprouts are still being tested.

So far, the outbreak has killed 24 people, infected over 2,400 and left hundreds hospitalized with a serious complication that can lead to kidney failure.

“If we don’t know the likely culprit in a week’s time, we may never know the cause,” Dr. Guenael Rodier, the director of communicable diseases at WHO, told The Associated Press in an interview 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 patients about foods they ate one to two weeks 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.

“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.”

Story Continues →

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.