The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention believe that slivered onions are the likely source of illness in an E.coli outbreak tied to Quarter Pounders at McDonald’s, the agency said Wednesday in a media report.
The agency said that since last week 15 additional illnesses have been reported, leading to 90 total impacted individuals. Five additional hospitalizations have been reported since the outbreak, bringing total hospitalizations to 27. The most recent illness was reported on Oct. 16. The CDC reiterated that the cases occurred before the onions were removed from restaurants and that public risk remains low.
McDonald’s said on Sunday that tests by the Colorado Department of Agriculture confirmed that fresh beef used in its Quarter Pounders was not the source of the outbreak. Quarter Pounders are returning to menus at roughly 3,000 restaurants this week, with onions missing from 900 restaurants that previously received slivered onions from the Taylor Farms’ Colorado Springs facility tied to the outbreak. The chain said it pulled the item from these restaurants out of an abundance of caution last week.
McDonald’s executives said Tuesday that they viewed the outbreak as contained and would work toward regaining consumer confidence and recovering the momentum it had with its U.S. business during the third quarter.
The chain ended the third quarter with a 0.3% increase in U.S. same-store sales and strong sales growth in the first three weeks of October. Traffic and sales have been down on a daily basis since Oct. 22, when the outbreak was first announced.
McDonald’s is also facing several individual lawsuits, including a class lawsuit filed on Tuesday, related to the outbreak. The class action lawsuit doesn’t specify damages, but exceeds $5 million for all people in the U.S. who ate the contaminated Quarter Pounders, according to Reuters.
