The US is dealing with an explosive diarrhea outbreak that has spread to 34 states and infected nearly 7,000 people, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Cyclosporiasis spreads through contaminated water or food, and the delay between infection and illness can be one to two weeks, which makes tracing exposure harder for people who are trying to figure out what they ate.
Michigan has more than 3,300 cases, and New York state is the second hardest hit. Steven Manderach, executive director of the Association of Food and Drug Officials, said to the: “This isn't like detecting a needle in a haystack. It's like detecting a microscopic portion of a needle in a haystack,” a line that captures how much harder the search gets when symptoms appear after the food is gone.
FoodNet and the outbreak trail
FoodNet, the Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network, is part of the system health officials use to track cyclospora, salmonella and listeria. Before FoodNet stopped monitoring cyclosporiasis, it gathered data about people who tested positive and tested food sources from states and labs at a national level. Last year, the federal government reduced FoodNet’s capacity and scaled back monitoring for all but two pathogens.
That reduction leaves investigators with less of the routine data they normally use when a cluster appears. Jodie Guest of Emory University's Rollins School of Public Health said, “When we see an outbreak or a cluster or something, we don't have the data we normally expect to go back to use to help us, and this is one of those consequences,” linking the reporting gap to the harder search for a source.
What people are being told
Health officials are telling people to thoroughly wash produce, avoid certain fruits like raspberries, and cook vegetables to kill off the pathogen, even though the source has not been identified. Public health experts said there are likely multiple points of contamination in the food supply, which means no single warning can fully map the exposure trail for people in 34 states.
Jodie Guest said the illness can take one to two weeks to show up, so a person in Michigan or New York state may not connect symptoms with a meal right away. That lag leaves officials tracing recent food histories while the outbreak keeps growing, and it is why the next step is still the same: identify the food source or contamination point that is driving the spread.
