News & Perspective

Sep 13 (CIDRAP News) – The US Department of Agriculture's (USDA's) move to ban the most common non-O157 strains of Escherichia coli from ground beef will start with testing of beef trim destined to become ground beef, followed sometime later by testing of actual ground beef, the agency said today.

(CIDRAP News) – Two Eurosurveillance reports yesterday shed new light on secondary infections in Europe's Escherichia coli O104:H4 outbreak, suggesting that the pathogen isn't more transmissible than other similar strains and that it can lose its extended-spectrum beta-lactamase (ESBL) resistance.

(CIDRAP News) – Germany's infectious disease institute has declared that the Escherichia coli O104:H4 outbreak is over, now that the incubation period for the most recently confirmed case with links to the sprout seed–related event has passed.

– German researchers who were the first to release the initial genome sequence of the Escherichia coli O104:H4 outbreak strain published their in-depth findings yesterday, which found that it differed from a 2001 strain found in Germany, but that both could have evolved from a common progenitor.