Western Canada: Search continues for the exact cause of E. coli outbreak in Calgary

Hi everyone, Mark Iype in Edmonton today.

More than a week after first being reported, public health officials in Calgary still do not have an answer as to the exact cause of what may be the worst E. coli outbreak among children in Canadian history. The illness has sickened 264 people, hospitalized 25 and six children are receiving peritoneal dialysis at Alberta Children’s Hospital to treat kidney failure, health officials said on Tuesday.

“This has been an extraordinary outbreak, both in terms of the numbers and the severity. It is certainly the largest E. coli outbreak in Alberta that I’m aware of,” said Alberta Chief Medical Officer of Health Mark Joffe. “We will continue to do all that we can do to investigate what happened here, to understand what happened, how it happened, and most importantly, what needs to be done differently.”

Provincial officials updated the public for the first time since the health emergency was first discovered over the Labour Day long weekend, with Dr. Tania Principi, section chief of pediatric emergency medicine at the Alberta Children’s Hospital, Health Minister Adriana LaGrange and Children and Family Services Minister Searle Turton joining Joffe at the podium.

While the specific cause of the outbreak remains under investigation, officials have pointed at the centralized kitchen, Fueling Minds, which served all the affected daycares.

A health inspection of the kitchen conducted on Sept. 5 found several violations, including cockroaches, a sewer gas smell in the food preparation area and that appropriate equipment for keeping food cold during transportation was not available.

“Food was not being handled in a manner that makes it safe to eat,” health inspectors said in the report, conducted the day after the E. coli outbreak was declared. “Operator indicated that cold foods were being transported to other locations in excess of 90 minutes without temperature control.”

Joffe said the kitchen remains closed, even as seven of the daycares were expected to have their closure orders lifted. He offered reassurance to parents that it is “safe to send your children back” to sites where closure orders have been rescinded.

Health inspectors have collected samples of 11 food types found in the centralized kitchen, including eight leftover food samples, which are now being tested, from different daycares. Food histories are also being collected from people who attended or worked at the child-care sites, both from those who fell ill and those who did not.

The seeming lack of urgency by public health officials and “thoughts and prayers” offered by the Alberta government in the first week was hammered home by the Globe’s André Picard in a column on Monday.

“We didn’t really need another brutal reminder of the eviscerated state of public health in this country, and politicians’ indifference to it, but here we have it,” he wrote.

While Joffe and the health minister said government had always taken the issue seriously and had been regularly updated by Alberta Health Services, questions remain as to why it took so long for the public to hear from them.

As André again says in his column: “This outbreak is also a reminder of how common and devastating food-borne illnesses can be, and why good food regulation and inspection is needed.”

This is the weekly Western Canada newsletter written by B.C. Editor Wendy Cox and Alberta Bureau Chief Mark Iype. If you’re reading this on the web, or it was forwarded to you from someone else, you can sign up for it and all Globe newsletters here.