Aisne: a "biological" link confirmed between food poisoning and closed butcher shops

The residents of Saint-Quentin finally have an answer. The wave of E. coli poisonings that killed a child in mid-June is indeed linked to meat sold in butcher shops in this commune in the Aisne department, according to genome sequencing results released by the Hauts-de-France Regional Health Agency and the prefecture on Wednesday, July 2.

The results "provide irrefutable proof of a correspondence between the bacteria found in several butcher shops or in the meat they sold and the bacteria found in several patients," the ARS and the prefecture stated. The sequencing was intended to determine that the victims had been contaminated with the same bacteria, which was the one taken from several butcher shops in the city.

Thirty cases of poisoning have been recorded since mid-June. Among the 30 cases are a 73-year-old person and 29 children, including Elise, who died on June 16 at the age of 11. The Paris prosecutor in charge of the investigation said Tuesday that the youngest child affected was an 11-month-old female baby.

The Saint-Quentin public prosecutor's office, which had opened a preliminary investigation into the charges of involuntary manslaughter, involuntary injury, endangerment and deception aggravated by endangering human health, relinquished jurisdiction on June 25 in favor of the public health division of the Paris public prosecutor's office, given the number of victims and the complexity of the investigations.

The interviews conducted by the health authorities had made it possible to "quickly identify meat consumption as a common factor among the various patients, and to identify the sources of the food consumed," the prefecture explained in a press release. The investigations identified four butcher shops in Saint-Quentin , as well as the butcher's section of a supermarket, as possibly having sold meat contaminated with E. coli.

"The identification of common patterns of consumption among the sick people, as well as the absence of new cases with recent symptoms for several days, have confirmed the targeted sources of contamination," the prefecture explained in its press release. "The results of the genomic sequencing confirm the formal biological link of contamination between the supply points and the sick people," it added. The butcher shops concerned were administratively closed between June 19 and 22.

The prefecture and the ARS recommend that anyone who has purchased products from the butcher shops concerned throw them away and clean their refrigerators . "If you or your children have consumed food from these establishments, monitor your health," the authorities also recommend, and "call 15 immediately in case of mucous-bloody diarrhea." "If you or your children have no symptoms, there is no need to contact or consult a doctor, or call 15," they add.

"The health of all those infected is improving," the Aisne prefecture assured Tuesday evening. "Four are still hospitalized and none are receiving dialysis," the prefecture added in a statement.

Two investigations, one of so-called epidemiological health and one of judicial investigations, are being conducted in parallel and will "create links between them," Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau explained on Tuesday. She did not rule out other cases if people defrost and consume previously purchased meat, specifying that the time "for symptoms to develop and appear is between 10 and 15 days."

The prosecutor stressed that the last two cases were linked to "secondary contamination, through the hands. That is to say, an infected person had to (...) leave the toilet without washing their hands properly, and hold the hands of another person who would then be contaminated."