E.coli New Strain May Reach “Biggest Spread Ever”

E.coli Bacteria

The new strain of the bacterium called E.coli (Escherichia coli), that caused the death of several people in Germany, is capable of spreading from person to person and could do so rapidly in what some specialists have already deemed as “the biggest spread ever.”

According to World Health Organisation, the new strain of the bacterium has already been detected in 12 European countries, causing panic amid the people and considerable economic damage as some vegetables (cucumbers imported from Spain) were considered carriers and were taken out of the markets.

Among the countries are Czech Republic, France, Denmark, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, UK, Austria, and the United States of America.

Escherichia Coli

So far, 1,600 people have been infested in all these countries. Except for two all the other cases of infection were detected on German territory. Hundreds of these people were left very ill, and 18 have died.

Health Protection Agency advises all the people who travel in or out of Germany to be very careful with their personal hygiene in order to avoid being infected with this virus.

The outbreak is considered one of the most rapid, and was considered my microbiologists as unprecedented in scale and severity.

One Briton has been detected among those infected, and as of yesterday night it has officially been detected on American soil.

According to the WHO the E.coli bacterium is a completely new mutant strain, and is more toxic and infectious than other varieties of it, it is resistant to antibiotics, and has an eight-day incubation period, which means that it may have not reached a peak yet.

Its action is against the blood and the kidneys, causing internal bleedings that can lead to death.

A characteristic is that, unlike other E.coli bacteria, this one attacks adult people, mostly adult women. Three quarters of sufferers are adult women, whose kidneys were attacked by it.

The origin of the bacterium has not yet been established, though the theory that it came from Spanish cucumbers was ruled out.

Russia banned any imports of raw vegetables from European countries, for fear of contamination. Russian newspaper Pravda went as far as to publish, on its online version, an article whose title was “E.coli, a terrorist attack?”