Texas is widely hit by the food- borne illness, Cyclospora, which has affected up to 140 people till August.
Texas is among the 16 states that have been hit by the Cyclospora outbreak. The state has confirmed 140 cases of the disease, which causes flu-like symptoms and diarrhea. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the illness is affecting people across the nation, which is believed to be caused by consumption of contaminated food.
"Cyclospora is a single cell organism similar to a protozoan. It lives in the human intestine exclusively," Your News Now quoted Dr. Albert T Gros, chief medical officer at St. David's South Austin Medical Center, as saying. "Even washing doesn't always eliminate all of these organisms and it can only take one to give someone some symptoms."
The Iowa Department of Inspections and Appeals (DIA) and the Nebraska Department of Health linked the source of the outbreak to a salad mix, but in other states like Texas, the source remains unidentified. The investigations continue as local health departments and the Department of State Health Services are questioning the affected patients to recall when and what they may have eaten. Officials will then see if there is a common food or a practice that led to the outbreak, Christine Mann at the Texas Department of State Health Services, told YNN.
But since a mix salad has been identified as the source in Iowa and Nebraska, Gros suggests that "avoiding pre-packaged salad might be better until we get a handle on where this came from and make sure it's been isolated from the food stream."
The Cyclospora infection has been reported in the following counties in Texas: Brazoria, Collin, Dallas, Denton, El Paso, Ellis, Fort Bend, Guadalupe, Harris, Henderson, Hidalgo, Hood, Hunt, Johnson, Kaufman, Montague, Parker, Potter, Smith, Tarrant, Tom Green, Travis, Victoria and Williamson, and Wise, according to Food Poison Journal.
