Moreover, 8 players on the Boston College Basketball team confirmed to have E.coli just moments after Boston College’s university medical staff sent out a campus-wide email notifying students and faculty that there were numerous people on campus that had become sick from the Chipotle restaurant in Cleveland Circle.
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Chipotle has been under a microscope since October 31, when it was first linked to an E. coli outbreak that has sickened 52 people in nine states.
“Health officials in Boston believe this is likely a norovirus, which seems consistent with the pattern, in our estimation”, Chipotle spokesman Chris Arnold told NBC News. A company spokesman noted that there have been no confirmed cases in MA, but that it was closing its restaurant in Boston’s Cleveland Circle as officials investigate.
At least 80 students have fallen ill after eating at Chipotle Mexican Grill (CMG), said Boston College in a statement on Tuesday.
According to the release from Chipotle, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention reports about 48 million cases of food-related illness in the US annually.
The investigation was launched Monday after BC students said they felt sick after eating there.
The illnesses prompted the temporary closure of a Chipotle restaurant in Boston where the students ate, and come as the chain’s sales are already being slammed by a multistate outbreak of E. coli linked to its restaurants.
According to a report from the Boston Inspectional Services department dated Monday, an employee at the Chipotle in Boston was sick while working a shift Thursday. However, it would take two days for the test results to be made available.
Infected workers cause about 70 percent of reported norovirus outbreaks from contaminated food.
Chipotle is now under siege from a nationwide E. coli outbreak that they have been unable to find the source of or halt, which is sending the company’s stock price tumbling. He reported that E. coli outbreak infected 71 people in five states in November and December 2006.
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Lora Rae Anderson, a spokeswoman at the state’s Department of Consumer Protection, said Tuesday that no complaints or reported incidents had been filed regarding Chipotle, which operates 19 locations in the state, including in New Haven, Shelton, Hamden and Milford.
