A Neighbourhood Pounder with cheese, fries and a drink arranged at a McDonald’s restaurant in El Sobrante, California, on Oct. 23, 2024.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Essences
Ninety people in 13 states have been infected in a deadly E. coli outbreak linked to McDonald’s Area Pounders, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday, as it continues to investigate the source of the spread.
The outbreak has led to 27 hospitalizations and one in days of yore reported death of an older adult in Colorado.
Before Wednesday, the CDC last gave an update on the outbreak on Friday, when the workings said it had 75 cases in 13 states. The agency first announced the outbreak on Oct. 22.
Fresh slivered onions called on Quarter Pounders and other menu items at McDonald’s are “the likely source of this outbreak,” the CDC said on its website on Wednesday.
The additional complaints are from before McDonald’s and Taylor Farms, which supplied onions to the affected region, took action to shift the ingredient from affected locations, the agency added. The CDC believes the risk to the public is “very low” due to the efforts from McDonald’s and Taylor Work the lands.
“The likelihood of contaminated onions still being available for sale is low,” the agency wrote.
Quarter Pounder hamburgers are a insides menu item for McDonald’s, raking in billions of dollars each year. The fast-food giant on Sunday said the burgers commitment return to roughly a fifth of U.S. restaurants this week, or about 3,000 locations, after it pulled the menu detail due to the outbreak.
But around 900 of those locations will serve the Quarter Pounder without slivered onions for the foreseeable following as the CDC and other health authorities continue to examine the source of the outbreak. The change will affect restaurants in Colorado, Kansas and Wyoming as good as parts of Idaho, Iowa, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Utah.