Health Law

National Western Stock Show Is Focus Of Colorado Report On Front Range E. Coli Outbreak Due Out Soon

By Marler Clark LLP

 Colorado's state government, from the Legislature on down, was closed Friday due to a spring snowstorm that dumped up to a couple of feet of snow on parts of metro Denver.   Most state workers were sent home around 1 p.m. Thursday and won't be returning until Monday morning.

So had it not been for the storm maybe we'd know by now the results of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment investigation into the outbreak of E. coli 0157:H7 that sickened up to 30 children on the Front Range after they attended last January's National Western Stock Show in Denver.

"Thirty people became ill, and we strongly suspect it originated at the stock show," Alicia Cronquist, an epidemiologist for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, told the Denver Post on March 18th.

"We are trying to find out what they did at the stock show that made them sick," said Cronquist.

This includes which exhibits they visited, which shows they went to and which animals they touched, she said.

Of the 30 cases, 29 have been confirmed through laboratory testing as E. coli with the "same fingerprint," Cronquist said. The 30th person sickened, she added, is a "probable case."

A report on the investigation is now due out at any moment---once everyone is back to work.

About 600,000 people annually attend the Stock Show.

Full post as published by e.Coli Blog on March 28, 2009 (boomark / email).