An outbreak of E coli poisoning that has now spread to 12 countries appears to be stabilising, a senior German doctor said, as the death toll rose to 19.
‘The situation is that the number of new infections appears to be stabilising,’ Reinhard Brunkhorst, president of the German Nephrology Society, told reporters in Hamburg, the epicentre of the scare.
But he added: ‘We are dealing here in fact with the biggest epidemic caused by bacteria in recent decades.’
All but one of the 19 people are from Germany.
Beyond Germany, people have also become ill in Austria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Britain and United States.
Germany announced today that it had set up a national task force to hunt down the source of the strain.
Repeating warnings to Germans not eat salad vegetables, health officials said they recorded 199 new cases of the rare, highly toxic strain of the infection in the past two days.
However, the EU's Reference Laboratory for E coli has said that scientific checks have failed to support the hypothesis that contaminated vegetables are behind the outbreak.
Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food Simon Coveney has said it is understandable that people are concerned about the outbreak.
However, Mr Coveney sought to reassure the public that precautions against the spread of the strain were being taken.
He said the Government is taking the advice of the Food Safety Authority and the Health Service Executive and will act on any threat to the public.
Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland, the Director of the HSE's Public Health Laboratory said it was inevitable that the bug would arrive in Ireland. Dr Eleanor McNamara has urged people to take precautions.
German authorities have failed to pinpoint the source of the bacteria, which has affected more than 2,000 people in the last month, but have renewed a warning to consumers not to eat raw vegetables.
The outbreak has put strains on trade relations, with Russia drawing EU criticism after banning raw vegetable imports from Europe and accusing Brussels of failing to handle the crisis.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, engaged in a trade row with the European Union after Moscow banned imports of raw fruit and vegetables from the bloc, heightened the drama, saying he would not ‘poison’ Russians by lifting the embargo.
The Enterohaemorrhagic E coli (EHEC) has caused full-blown haemolytic uraemic syndrome (HUS), a potentially deadly disease that causes bloody diarrhoea and serious liver damage, in 500 of those infected.
There were contradictory accounts as to whether the strain of E coli was new, or whether Europe was witnessing the first outbreak of a rare but known type of bacteria that officials believe is carried by raw vegetables.
The outbreak was initially blamed on Spanish cucumbers by German officials who later admitted that they were in the dark about its origin.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has talked to Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez-Zapatero about the impact on Spanish farmers initially blamed for the outbreak.
