Southwestern Public Health has provided an update after almost half of the nearly 100 faculty who attended a catered staff event at Parkside Collegiate Institute on April 8th developed gastrointestinal symptoms shortly after.
They’ve been working closely with Thames Valley District School Board to investigate the group of illnesses from the event of which students were not present.
No severe illnesses were identified and food samples from the caterer found no evidence of bacterial contamination, such as salmonella, E.coli or other common bacterial food contaminants. A small number of stool samples were also collected for bacterial and viral testing, with nothing detected.
“When a group of illnesses like this happens, we follow specific processes to gather evidence, test samples, and monitor whether the illness is spreading,” says Joanne Andrews, Manager of Infectious Diseases. “Sometimes the evidence available to us is limited, which is the case in this investigation.”
Andrews added that “there is currently no evidence that the catered food was the source of the infection.”
Southwestern Public Health is continuing to monitor the situation.
Written by: K. Freeman
