LOS ANGELES Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc (CMG.N) is now linked to 35 confirmed E. coli food poisoning cases in Oregon and Washington, state officials said on Tuesday.
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The Oregon Health Authority, Washington State Department of Health, Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are continuing to work with Washington, Multnomah, Clackamas and Clark counties to investigate the outbreak.
The Medford location was not affected.
Washington and Oregon health officials now say 37 people have been sickened by E. coli, up from 22. “It’s more likely that it’s one of the fresh food items”.
“Anyone who thinks that they may have become ill from eating at a Chipotle restaurant in the past three weeks should consult their healthcare provider”, Dr. Scott Lindquist of the Washington State Department of Health said in a statement.
Most people’s symptoms of the outbreak include bloody diarrhea and abdominal cramps within one to 10 days.
Chipotle uses technology to track its food supply, from the ground to their restaurants. Chipotle opened with a single restaurant in 1993 and operates more than 1,900 restaurants, including 17 Chipotle restaurants outside the U.S., 11 ShopHouse Southeast Asian Kitchen restaurants, and is an investor in an entity that owns and operates three Pizzeria Locale restaurants.
If the restaurants remained closed for the rest of the year, Chipotle could see reduced quarterly earnings, according to Charles. In California, health workers said norovirus sickened almost 100 customers and employees at a Chipotle restaurant in Simi Valley in mid-August.
They are also collecting food samples from Chipotle restaurants where infected people have eaten in order to trace the origin of the outbreak.
Health officials believe the contamination at Chipotle is related to a fresh food product such as lettuce or other produce.
According to CBS News, 19 of the confirmed cases are from Washington while the other 3 came from Portland.
Food from six Chipotle stores connected with the outbreak is being tested.
All of Chipotle’s 43 stores in or near Seattle and Portland are closed because of the E. col 026 outbreak, leading to a PR crisis for the popular chain.
On Tuesday, officials in Washington and Oregon plan to update the number of people who have fallen ill.
The company voluntarily closed 43 restaurants in the Northwest after health officials alerted the Mexican food chain to the outbreak.
Eight Chipotle restaurants have been tied to the outbreak.
In her complaint, Mode said, she ate at a Chipotle restaurant on October 21 and became sick after four days. Health officials say they are looking back at a month of public health reports for other possible cases and looking statewide in both Oregon and Washington. Most are harmless, but a few can cause serious problems.
Escherichia coli (E. coli) bacteria normally lives in the intestines of people and animals, but a few strains can cause illness and, in a few cases, death.
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The company’s stock fell 2.5 percent to close at $624 on Monday.
