RIGA - The operation of Straupe dairy company's hand-packed product line has been partially suspended after several of the company's employees tested positive for E. coli infection, Maris Balodis, director-general of the Food and Veterinary Service, informed at a news conference on an epidemiological investigation of the outbreak of enterohaemorrhagic E.coli infection.
The dairy company's packing line where products are manually filled into reusable containers, has temporarily been shut down. The Food and Veterinary Service has decided to temporarily suspend this product-packaging line and advises against the consumption of these products. These could be liquid products in plastic containers, such as milk or cream.
The company supplied these products to 14 preschools at a time when several pupils in these education establishments in different regions of Latvia became ill with an intestinal infection caused by the E. coli bacteria. During inspections in the catering blocks of the preschool educational establishments, the Food and Veterinary Service took samples of various food products, including dairy products, meat, fruit and vegetables, as well as ready meals, for laboratory testing.
Information on food suppliers, including Straupe, was also collected during the inspections.
Samples of products from this company were also sent for laboratory testing for the presence of verotoxigenic E. Coli.
The laboratory tests of the food products have so far returned negative.
The Food and Veterinary Service has ordered Straupe to recall all manually filled dairy products that had been produced before April 10, as well as the carry out an extraordinary washing and disinfection of the company's production premises and equipment, as well as to organize repeated employee training on hygiene.
The automated packing line has not been stopped, as the products do not come into contact with the workers at this stage.
Jurijs Perevozcikovs, Director of the Department of Risk Analysis and Prevention at the Center for Disease Prevention and Control (SPKC), indicated that seven employees of the dairy company had tested positive for E. coli and that these employees had been involved in preparing food products.
The products are likely to have been contaminated by the company's employees, who transferred the bacteria to the food. According to the CDC representative, the employees may not have had any noticeable symptoms. Sequencing data is still being collected and analyzed. The current evidence of a connection between children and Straupe's employees is still circumstantial, though.
Samples were also taken on several farms to check serotyping, but the transmission was from humans, even if the source could have been cattle.
Straupe CEO Imants Balodis told LETA that he was not yet informed about the situation and the results of the lab tests, so he could not comment on them. However, he said that samples were taken from the company's employees on Wednesday, April 9, and the Food and Veterinary Service continued to take samples also on Thursday, April 10.
Balodis told the Panorama news program of Latvian Television that nothing has been found in Straupe's products so far and that the infection has only been found in the company's employees. Balodis underlined that the company's products are consumed by hundreds of children, but that only few of them have fallen ill with E. coli, which is why he does not believe that they got the infection from dairy products.
As reported, at least 60 cases of E. coli have been confirmed so far during the current outbreak, the vast majority in children. Cases have been reported in different suburbs of Riga, as well as in Liepaja, Jelgava, Ropazi, Kekava, Salaspils, Adazi, Sigulda, Cesis and South Kurzeme regions.
Several children with E. coli are being treated in hospital. Meanwhile, some of the infected people have no symptoms of the disease.
The results obtained in the investigation of the E. coli outbreak point to at least two sources of infection, experts from the Center for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC) told a meeting of the State Operative Medicine Commission on Monday.
Representatives of the Health Ministry informed that the sequencing of patient samples so far has revealed multiple infectious agents from different sources.
CDC experts informed that they were in contact with colleagues from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) about the epidemiological measures to be implemented to curb the outbreak.
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