Federal health officials are preparing to declare an end to the largest cyclospora outbreak on record in the United States, according to the New York Times, citing three senior administration officials.
Taylor Farms iceberg lettuce has been identified as the source of illnesses in at least 11,458 people spread across 20 states, the FDA and CDC reported as of August 27. Of those sickened, 495 have been hospitalized and two have died. According to the Times, the CDC's standard for closing out a foodborne outbreak requires that fresh cases have stopped emerging and that the responsible product is no longer on store shelves.
An official announcement could come as early as Thursday, CNN reported, citing the Washington Post. Beyond the confirmed cases linked to Taylor Farms, the CDC has confirmed or is investigating more than 17,000 cases logged since May 1, according to the Times.
The FDA said it "remains confident that all recalled iceberg lettuce related to this specific Cyclospora outbreak is off the market." The latest best-by date on the recalled lettuce was August 3. Taylor Farms announced a voluntary recall of all iceberg lettuce grown in central Mexico in July, with recalled products distributed across 27 states and sold at retailers and restaurant chains including Walmart, Taco Bell, Subway, and Jack in the Box.
A worker told CNN that the Doctor Mora, Mexico facility has been shuttered since approximately July 10, when it last touched any food packaging, and that no date has been set for it to resume operations.
New cases have continued to emerge in the weeks since the recall, partly because of the extended reporting timeline for cyclospora. Cyclospora can take up to two weeks to produce symptoms after ingestion, and the chain of steps that follows — doctor visits, lab testing, and state reporting — can push the official CDC count another several weeks behind, so the recorded case total may trail real-world exposure by roughly six weeks.
The FDA is still working to determine the root cause of the outbreak; the agency dispatched investigators to the Taylor Farms processing center and lettuce-growing operations in northeastern Mexico last month, according to the Times. Separately, the FDA is tracking three additional active cyclospora outbreaks — the biggest of which has reached 231 cases — and has yet to pinpoint a contamination source for any of them.
The hardest-hit state was Michigan, where about 1 in every 1,000 residents was sickened. Investigators initially traced the outbreak to shredded iceberg lettuce served at Taco Bell locations in Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and West Virginia before the scope expanded nationally. To put the scale in context, the Times notes that the same four-month window in the prior year saw roughly 1,180 cyclospora cases nationwide.