She says the investigation by the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food is complicated because the salad with rotisserie chicken is put together in-store with ingredients from a variety of sources.
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Tauxe says the CDC has already identified a DNA fingerprint of the E. coli strain that connects all 19 ill people.
Of the current 19 patients, two have suffered from kidney failure.
Bill Marler, a food safety advocate and attorney, said the E.coli O157 strain associated with the chicken salad tends to have a higher number of people develop kidney failure than the six other strains of E.coli.
Wilson said that all five people hospitalized in connection with consuming Costco’s rotisserie chicken salad have now been release, have recovered and are doing well. Costco Wholesale has since stopped preparing and selling the salad. DNA “fingerprinting” is performed on E. coli bacteria isolated from ill people by using a technique called pulsed-field gel electrophoresis, or PFGE.
Wilson identified the supplier as Taylor Farms in Salinas, Calif.
The CDC alert lists seven states in which contaminated chicken salad could have been sold, including Montana, Utah, Colorado, Washington, California, Missouri and Virginia.
14 (88%) of 16 people purchased or ate rotisserie chicken salad from Costco in the week before illness started.
The Shiga-toxin-producing E. coli O157:H7 is not the same strain that sickened Chipotle customers recently. No deaths have been reported, but two individuals developed hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS), a type of kidney failure that can lead to permanent damage to the kidneys and other organs. Anyone who bought chicken salad from a Costco store in the US on or before November 20, 2015, should not eat it and should throw it away. The outbreak is not related to a recent case involving Chipotle restaurants in which 40 people were sickened.
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Symptoms of E. coli infection include diarrhea, abdominal cramps, nausea and vomiting. It can take 3 to 7 days from the time of exposure to E. coli until symptoms appear.
