Danish cucumber panic subsided, but the persistence of E. coli infection

 Danish authorities have stated cucumbers produced in the country were free of charge of E.coli however it was unclear when the outbreak of infections caused by the harmful bacteria would end.

"We have the results from our laboratory and there is no E.coli inside the Danish cucumbers we have analyzed," Kim Vandrup Sigsgaard, head of food emergencies at Denmark's Veterinary and Food Administration (DVFA).

"We have been able to obtain some cucumbers from the lot that was suspected. We have also been taking samples from production from other Danish batches, along with the results had been negative all around," Sigsgaard added.

Many hundred circumstances of severe intestinal infection caused by E.coli bacteria have been reported in northern Europe within the past week.

German authorities suspected Danish cucumbers as a source of the outbreak as numerous individuals contracted the infection soon after eating at a restaurant in Hamburg, Germany, where cucumbers originating from both Denmark and the Netherlands were served.

This statement from the Danish authorities need to cheer up Danish growers who create some 250,000 cucumbers per day.

They had been losing up to half a million Danish kroners (about 100,000 U.S. dollars) worth of sales daily owing to the outbreak, stated Torben Lippert, a consultant at Danish Horticulture, an business association.

"Sales were low simply because buyers were nervous ... We hope we have seen the high-point of the outbreak and are anxious to know the origin and reason of the difficulty," he told Xinhua Tuesday.

However, these answers may not be simply forthcoming.

"It is really difficult to predict when the outbreak will be over because we do not know the exact source of the outbreak," stated Kaare Moelbak, an expert in epidemiology at Copenhagen's National Serum Institute, a medical research institute.

"If it really is a source that continues to distribute contaminated goods, there will be a long tail on this outbreak," he told Xinhua in an interview Tuesday.

As of Tuesday, there were 14 confirmed circumstances and 26 suspected ones of E. coli infection in Denmark.

In neighboring Germany, where the outbreak began, there were about 1,200 confirmed and suspected circumstances, and a minimum of 14 men and women reported dead. Cases have also been reported in Sweden and Spain.

Nearly all of the confirmed instances are thought to have recently travelled to northern Germany, Moelbak stated.

The infection, which is food-borne, can be caused by consuming raw foods such as vegetables contaminated with the E.coli bacteria. Symptoms contain mild fever, bloody diarrhea and vomit.

Even though usually affecting the very young, Moelbak said 88 percent of those affected by the existing outbreak are above the age of 20. Moreover, 373 cases of kidney failure have been registered in Germany.

"This is a rare illness that generally affects young kids. So both the number of kidney failures and also the age distribution tell us that this is actually a quite unusual scenario," he stated.

Whilst it's unclear how the contamination occurred, the DVFA advises Danish consumers "not to eat raw tomato, cucumber or leaf salad from northern Germany and cucumbers from Spain," items suspected to be behind the outbreak.

The fact that these are foods typically preferred by adults than children could explain the tilt toward adult infections, Moelbak stated.

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