5 sick Arkansans test negative for E. coli, officials say
Posted on Wednesday, September 3, 2008
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/News/236206/
Arkansas health officials have found no confirmed cases of E. coli among five Arkansans who became sick after eating at an Oklahoma restaurant.
So the Arkansas Department of Health has closed its end of the investigation and won’t resume it unless other cases come to its attention, spokesman Ed Barham said Tuesday.
“We don’t expect any new information,” Barham said, and all five Arkansans are expected to recover.
The lack of positive test results doesn’t mean the patients never contracted E. coli, he said, because once the bacteria passes through a person’s system it doesn’t show up in cultures. But this is also why it would be fruitless to continue following the five cases, he said.
A spokesman for the Oklahoma Department of Health, Leslea Bennett-Webb, said officials there have not determined the total number of people hospitalized since the outbreak, which late last week stood at roughly 50. But as of late Tuesday afternoon, at least 27 people still remain hospitalized, she added.
Health investigators said Tuesday the overall number of people sickened from the outbreak had risen to 206: 149 adults, 53 children and four whose ages hadn’t been confirmed. Those afflicted range in age from 2 months to 88 years.
In Arkansas, four of the five cases Arkansas health officials were investigating had resulted in hospitalizations, but only one of those was still hospitalized as of Tuesday afternoon, Barham said. The number of cases the Arkansas department was following rose from four to five during the holiday weekend.
Arkansas officials have said they can’t provide detailed information because of federal patient privacy laws and that they are not involved in patient treatment.
“Our role is to help investigate the cause and to prevent the spread,” he said.
Gelia Ruple of Vilonia said Tuesday afternoon that her father, David Waddle, 61, of Cabot still was awaiting word from his doctors at Baptist Health Medical Center in Little Rock on whether he could go home Tuesday night.
“My dad is doing a whole lot better,” Ruple said.
When Waddle first was hospitalized in Siloam Springs, doctors there told family members he had tested positive for E. coli, she said, but she didn’t know whether the tests had been confirmed as identical to the rare strain, E. coli 0111, which Oklahoma investigators have identified.
However, Ruple said, after Baptist doctors following the Oklahoma investigation switched Waddle’s treatment from antibiotics to anti-toxin medication, he began improving quickly.
There have been no more reported deaths since Oklahoma officials reported one on Aug. 25. The illness claimed 26-yearold bank employee Chad Ingle of Pryor, Okla.
Oklahoma health investigators have found a clear connection to only one restaurant, the Country Cottage in Locust Grove, Okla., but have not yet confirmed how the contamination occurred. Locust Grove is in northeast Oklahoma, about 40 miles west of Siloam Springs.
Laboratory analysis of water samples taken from a private well on the restaurant property found no disease-causing bacteria, the Oklahoma Health Department said Tuesday in a news release. The restaurant has closed during the investigation and is working closely with Oklahoma health officials, they said.
The five Arkansans who had severe illness all had eaten at the Country Cottage, Barham said.