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OTTAWA – The Canadian Food Inspection Agency has analyzed more than 2,000 samples of fresh lettuce and packaged salads, but no products containing the bacteria have been detected in search of the source of an outbreak of E . Coli.
Aline Dimitri, Deputy Director General of Food Safety for the agency, said Friday that the results did not mean that E. coli was no longer available.
They suggest that if it is present, it is at very low levels, she said.
Coli were confirmed Friday in Ontario and Quebec, bringing to 22 the total number of cases since mid-October: one in New Brunswick, four in Ontario and 17 in Quebec.
Eight patients were hospitalized and one developed a type of renal failure, mainly in patients with E. Coli. The youngest patient is five years old and the oldest is 93 years old.
Howard Njoo, Chief Public Health Officer of Canada, said many people who fall ill during most of the outbreaks never use medical care.
He added that experts tracing the patients' food history found that most patients who became ill had eaten romaine lettuce in the days leading up to their illness.
To trace a person's eating history, one needs to ask what person has eaten and where, Njoo said.
He also stated that this involved obtaining items such as grocery store loyalty cards in order to confirm what had been purchased and when.
The agency recommends to the inhabitants of these provinces not to eat romaine lettuce nor to throw those that they still have in the refrigerator.
He avoids recalling romaine lettuce or telling retailers to take it out of their shelves.
Njoo said the evidence currently does not connect the outbreak to a particular product, but only if it alters Canadian warnings as well. Several retailers have voluntarily removed Roman from their shelves in the meantime.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a much broader warning on Tuesday, stating that Americans should not eat romaine in the United States and that restaurants should stop serving it.
He also said retailers should take it off their shelves.
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Coli is present in 32 confirmed cases in 11 states and on Friday, the commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration said that the romaine involved probably came from California because of her farming and harvesting habits.
Canadian companies may decide to continue selling Roman, Dimitri said Friday.
Njoo also said the most recent illness had started on Nov. 1, but that a delay in the report had prevented the agency from reporting it until this week.
The shelf life of the romaine is four to five weeks, he said, adding that this is why the agency always warned people to discard lettuce.
This is at least the third focus of E. Leafy coli in the United States and Canada during the last two years.
The current outbreak contains the same DNA markers as the E. coli strain of November and December 2017, related to leafy greens in the United States and to romaine lettuce in Canada.
Coli have been reported in Canada in Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador. Seventeen people were hospitalized and one person died.
The cause of the contamination was never identified in this outbreak, although many patients ate romaine lettuce before they became ill.
Earlier this year, about 200 people in 35 US states were infected with E. coli linked to romaine lettuce grown in Arizona, but this strain of E. Coli is different from that observed during this autumn's epidemic.
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