The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention typically coordinates between 17 and 36 foodborne illness investigations each week, involving multiple states.
A report is posted weekly, but it does not include information about where the outbreaks are occurring, which foods are involved or how many patients have been identified.
To identify an outbreak, two or more people must be infected with the same strain of a pathogen. This can be done through Whole Genome Sequencing of samples collected from patients. Another way outbreaks can be identified is by linking people to a single source of a pathogen.
This week, the agency is working on 21 outbreaks.
The pathogens involved in the outbreaks are:
Campylobacter with two outbreaks;
E. coli with four outbreaks;
Listeria with four outbreaks; And
Salmonella with 11 outbreaks.
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