RFK Jr finally addressed explosive diarrhoea in the USA but, as Helena Bottemiller Evich explained, “To be clear, the outbreak (or rather outbreaks) are not under control”.

[W]e are nearing 12,000 cases of parasitic illnesses. This is not under control. This is a disaster.

It has become clear that the current outbreak is actually at least six outbreaks, some of which are not tied to Taylor Farms. For example, North Carolina is having an outbreak of its own that seems to be linked to parsley and cilantro as well as lettuce.

While I am going to keep an eye on developments in the US, I thought it would be worth taking a look at Europe. The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control has a handy explainer on cryptosporidiosis, which links to the most recent Annual Epidemiological Report, for 2020. That reveals a drop in overall cases, the result of Covid and the UK’s withdrawal from the EU, and also that the rate of reports for children aged 0–4 years had fallen to one third of the average for the previous five years. Five countries accounted for 65% of all confirmed cases, and Germany alone accounted for 28%.

There’s a handy dashboard that breaks down numbers by country. The map is slightly misleading, because the number of cases is related to the population. Expand the table on the left and you see that tiny Luxembourg is the cyclosporiasis hotspot for Europe, though Belgium, Ireland, and Iceland get an honourable mention. Despite the high number of cases in Germany, the population rate is not that high.

I guess we are doing reasonably well with cryptospora over here. It maybe even under control.

Also relevant to this week’s newsletter, Can Fixing Dinner Fix the Planet? with Jess Fanzo.

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