Japan to Test School Staff for Contagion
Sakai, the city hardest hit by Japan’s food poisoning outbreak, ordered testing of teachers and its schools’ lunch staffs Sunday in hope of stopping the sickness from spreading.
Japanese health officials suspect tainted school lunches caused the outbreak of E. coli bacteria that has killed seven people and put hundreds in the hospital. They have yet to pinpoint specific foods.
Nearly 9,000 people, almost all schoolchildren, have reportedly fallen ill from the highly contagious bacteria--almost 7,000 of them in Sakai, a city of 800,000 people south of Osaka.
A Sakai city spokesman said 366 children remained hospitalized, 38 of them in serious condition.
In a sign of how the bacteria has spread from original sufferers to family members and friends, a survey in Sakai showed that nearly 4% of residents may now have the germ. Most new cases in the past few days involved residents who had been in touch with previously infected patients.
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