Five children have been diagnosed with E. Coli connected to the fair. Georgia Department of Public Health says it’s trying to figure out the source of where the bacteria came from.
“Our epidemiologists immediately started looking through our syndromic surveillance, which is just a database that medical providers just dump information into, and you can query certain symptoms,” said Carle Coley, an Environmental Health Director with Georgia DPH. “Once they began to query those symptoms, within 30 minutes we were able to find other cases across the state.”
Georgia DPH put out a survey Thursday and has received 800 responses so far. The investigation should only take a few weeks if it continues to get responses to their survey.
Even if you did not get sick after the fair, DPH is asking you to fill out their survey here: https://sendss.state.ga.us/sendss/!dynamicsurvey.surveypublicprompt?pQATemplateId=14259.