Link between Maritime and Ont. E. Coli cases
Posted Jan 10, 2013 03:38:17 AM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Health officials in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia say there is a link between E. coli cases in the Maritimes and four cases reported in Ontario.
Doctor Eilish Cleary, New Brunswick’s chief medical officer of health, says the three provinces are working with the Public Health Agency of Canada to try to find the source of the outbreak.
New Brunswick had reported five cases of the infection, but has increased that number to six because a case that had been reported in another province was actually someone visiting from Fredericton.
Nova Scotia has reported at least ten cases.
Cleary says no one in New Brunswick has become ill with the infection since a few days after Christmas, so she is hoping that means the source is now out of the food chain.
Only one of the New Brunswick cases had to be hospitalized.
The strain of E. coli reported in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia is the same one found in the Walkerton, Ontario water disaster in 2000 that killed seven people.
Symptoms of the gastro-intestinal illness include severe cramps, bloody diarrhea and vomiting.
