Tuesday, August 05, 2008
Officials think beef likely source of E. coli outbreak
Three new, unconfirmed cases of illness were reported among Boy Scouts who camped last week.
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As the number of sick children continued to climb, health officials said Monday that ground beef tainted with E. coli was found at a Boy Scout camp in Rockbridge County.
"They did have a box left over of the ground beef used and we took it back to lab and tested it and it did contain E. coli," said Dr. Douglas Larsen, director for the Central Shenandoah Health District.
"It matched with stool samples taken from several of the children. It is the same strain," he said.
Undercooked ground beef is the most common cause of E. coli infection.
Scouting officials closed the Goshen Scout Reservation at noon Sunday after learning that three additional children had symptoms of E. coli bacteria infection.
Whereas previous reports of illness came from Scouts who attended the camp during the week of July 20, the new reports came from campers in attendance last week.
Approximately 67 campers have reported illness related to the case to the Virginia Department of Health and, of those, E. coli 0157 has been confirmed in 16 children, according to numbers released Monday. Of those confirmed cases, 11 Scouts have been hospitalized.
That the same strain of E. coli was found in the uncooked beef and in some stool samples doesn't not mean the case is closed, Larsen said.
Campers had cooked hamburgers in tinfoil over camp fires, leaving health officials to hypothesize that the meat was not cooked to a high enough temperature. To kill bacteria, ground beef should be cooked to 160 degrees Fahrenheit, according to health officials.
"It just adds more credibility that it [ground beef] may be the cause of the situation, but it is still an ongoing investigation," Larsen said.
In particular, the health department is awaiting test results from the three Scouts who became ill last week.
"We pray they are [sick from] another infection, because, if it is a different infection, we will think this is a onetime event," Larsen said. "If other cases turn out to be E. coli, then we have to look somewhere else than ground beef."
Five health department officials, including Larsen, returned to the camp Monday to survey the 200 camp staffers.
The Goshen camps are primarily used by Boy Scout troops from the National Capital Area Council, based in Maryland. Southwestern Virginia troops typically visit camps in Pulaski County, Boy Scout leaders said last week.
