The Department of Health, along with the Centers for Disease Control and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, is continuing to investigate the source of the outbreak.
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The seven unidentified people added to the list on Friday are from Ohio, California, Illinois, Maryland, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Washington.
“What you really need in order for the finger to be pointed at the source is for people to eat different things: People who eat A get sick and people eat B do not”, Schaffner explained to ABC News.
The sales warning came just hours after federal food safety investigators said the outbreak had expanded to three more states, bringing the total to nine. Chipotle voluntarily closed down 43 of its locations in Washington and the Portland area as a precaution after an E. coli outbreak linked to six of its restaurants in the two states has sickened almost two dozen people.
The company said sales trends so far in Q4 have been “extremely volatile”, and October comps were in the low-single-digit range. Prior to Friday’s report, the onset of most cases of illness had been in late October.
The agency said the most recent illness started on November 13. “Most people infected with Shiga toxin-producing E.coli (STEC) develop diarrhea (often bloody) and abdominal cramps an average of 3 to 4 days after ingesting the germ”.
The popular burrito chain said in an SEC filing that it is “rescinding our previously-announced 2016 outlook for comparable restaurant sales increases”.
In addition, Chipotle said it expects to spend between $6 million and $8 million to replace food, send food samples for analysis, test restaurants and consult with advisers.
Chipotle also discussed some of the new measures it’s undertaken to improve safety and quality, including more extensive food testing and improved training. Some of the features of the new program include: the use high-resolution testing on all fresh produce. It also added that ingredients likely to have been connected to E. coli are no longer in Chipotle’s restaurants or supply system.
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Chris Arnold, a spokesman for Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc., said the company’s local produce suppliers may not all be able to meet the new standards.
