News

Mostly children sick The Mekcklenburg-Vorpommern State Office for Health and Social Affairs (LAGuS) and the State Office for Agriculture, Food Safety and Fisheries (LALLF) started investigating an unusual cluster of E. coli infections in August. The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) has been supporting the outbreak investigation since the end of August. As part of the weekly exchange between the state authorities for infection control and the RKI, LAGuS reported five cases of E. coli or HUS in children in the Vorpommern-Rügen district in mid-August. The median age of confirmed cases is 5 years old, and among all outbreak cases it is 7 with a range of under 1 to 92 years old. A case-control study is being conducted, in which the data from patients on the frequency of consumption of certain foods are compared with responses from a control group.