Officials: Tracking food illness complex
More than 500 report sickness after eating at a Powell Chipotle.
Local public health officials say they have the means to trace the source of a future restaurant-related outbreak, though regular inspections help ward off such issues.
This week a surge of reports of illness caused a Chipotle Mexican Grill in central Ohio to voluntarily shut its doors Monday, though it has since reopened.
On Wednesday, the Delaware County Health District told this newspaper it had received more than 500 inquiries from customers who suspected the Powell restaurant’s food made them sick.
“Our staff has been fielding calls all day long since yesterday. When we get calls, we have to follow up and investigate all of them,”said Traci Whittaker, the Delaware County health district’s spokeswoman.
The cause of the illnesses is still unknown.
A large outbreak takes a sig- nificant amount of work to trace the root cause, said Larry Shaffer, director of environmental health for Clark County Combined Health District.
“It’s an incredible amount of work,” said Shaffer. “They’ve got to interview all those people. It’s hours and hours and hours of work and you’ve got to get it done quickly because time is important if you’re going to really figure this thing out.”
Local retail food sellers such as restaurants are inspected by a local public health agency either once or twice a year — depending on the type of license.
It’s normal for health department to get calls to inspect a place that someone suspects made served them contaminated food.
But Shaffer said the source of a food-borne illness is not always
the place a person thinks is to blame, given that it can take eight to 36 hours for symptoms to set in.
“It’s usually not the last place you ate,” he said.
Single cases of illness can be difficult to trace back to the original source, though once there are multiple cases then public health officials can start to look for common links.
Reports can come from people calling their local health department but can also come from doctors, who have certain manda- tory reporting requirements, said Jennifer Wentzel, direc- tor of environmental health for Public Health - Dayton & Montgomery County.
When trying to trace the source of an outbreak, pub- lic health officials have to work fast to trace the source, which can be tricky. People can’t always remember where they ate or don’t think a food history is important, insisting the source of the illness must be the last place they ate.
Quick action needed
Shaffer said its a lot of work to quickly figure out the source and to take food histories for all of the people reporting falling ill and then to cross check histories to find common links.
Those filing complaints can be asked for stool samples, but public health officials have to have done enough research to tell the lab what kind of tests, such as those for Norovirus or E. coli.
“You have to give them an idea what to test for, because there’s more than one test,” Shaffer said.
While chain restaurants might have high-profile cases of outbreaks, their controlled supply chain and cooking process both help prevent food borne illness and make it easier to trace the source of illness when an outbreak occurs.
But outbreaks at other kinds of group settings, like church potlucks, can be some of the most difficult to trace, with food coming from multiple kitchens and sources.
“Those are some of the hardest to investigate,” he said.
Wentzel said when there’s an outbreak, it doesn’t always trace back to a restaurant and can sometimes be linked to foods cooked at home.
Wentzel said if there is an health issue at a restaurant, they work with the business to fix the root cause of the issue. That can range from identifying a sick employee to removing contaminated food and cleaning.