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Subscribe to RSSBERLIN - More than 6,500 German children and teenagers have fallen ill with diarrhea and vomiting that health authorities say was likely caused by a food-borne virus in meals delivered to schools and daycare centers.
Regional health ministries and a top health research institute said youngsters from five of Germany's 16 states had been affected by the acute gastroenteritis, with the first cases registered on Tuesday. So far, those affected had not suffered any complications.
"All the institutions which have registered cases of the illness so far are probably being provided by the same caterer," wrote the Robert Koch Institute, which researches and advises the German health ministry on infectious diseases. "This suggests that it is an outbreak caused by food."
The German government and affected states have established a task force charged with looking for the reason for the illness in order to prevent it spreading any further.
(Reporting By Thorsten Severin, Writing by Sarah Marsh; Editing by Myra MacDonald)
Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.
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Barry must be on a tour there.
Classy comment.
Yet again, something that has nothing to do with politics and someone turns into such.
I've just started reporting comments like this when they have nothing to do with the article. Maybe you asses will get it when you're IP-banned and can't figure out how to get around it.
Bean sprouts?
und hier habt wir der Sauerkraut, ja! (ralph)
Glaubte es war die Gürkeln vom letzten Jahr!
Maybe Germany should tear down the house that Hitler grew up in.
Hitler grew up in Austria :/
comment #3 Pretty pathetic when almost 70 years after WWII a mind is still so limited it doesn't know anything to associate with Germany other than 'Hitler'. And yes, Hitler even had the village in Austria RAZED to get rid of all traces that connected him to his father being the illegitimate child of a wealthy Jew who wanted nothing to do with either one of them...
Now go read something! Next week the subject is China: hope you'll know more than stupid one-liners about cats in the food!
Zer is vomit in my Strudel
Didn't know vomit could "outbreak".
Just reading an article on vomit makes me want to puke.
It happens sometimes. My whole elementary school had to be closed in the early 1990s for like a week because almost all of us caught norovirus and they had to go through and bleach the whole school and let everyone get over it at home and stop the spread. Probably like 500 students.
It's just a very odd way to state it, a "vomit outbreak". Something lost in translation.
Yeah. You'd think they'd say something like "Stomach Virus." I don't know...Just sayin'.
i guarantee you the caterer is a foreign national.
I think they're sick of hearing how evil their grandparents supposedly were.
People born after the war and had to grow up in it did. There was a lot of mistrust in government during the '60s and '70s in Germany, because a lot of people who served in administrations during the Nazi regime came out being politicians in the BRD. The kids growing up in this generation are usually able to joke about it more.
Still, it's not a topic you should bring up while you're there.
Right... I was thinking maybe they read about their grandparents, and just couldn't stomach what pigs they were. I don't sympathize. There should be a lot more vomiting.
Yea, think about YOUR grandparents and how they sloughtered: We mustn't forget that mass killing of Native Americans occurred in our own country. As a result, bigotry and racial discrimination still exist.
Or maybe we can hope they figure it out soon and that all the children recover.
Bang head against wall at lack of writing skills.
Vomit outbreak??? Virus outbreak, or gastrointestinal virus outbreak, or stomach virus outbreak, etc.
Vomit outbreak???
Please send some people to writing class.
@economy;
Yes I found this out of sorts also,this is a symptom of the problem, not just the problem.
Vomit outbreak,lol
It's all that good German Bier they've been drinking. ;)
They'd only be throwing up if they had to drink the likes of Bud Light, Miller Light, and the assorted crap we label as "beer."
Alcohol snobs... Duly noted.
Budweiser and Miller beers make me want to gag and vomit just by merely looking at them. Naturally, I can sort of understand why a teenager might tolerate these beers if he has never drunk any other beer before in his life, but other than that why does anyone else suffer to choke down this vilest of swill? Having said that, many English and Irish beers seem to win me over, much more so than others. And, German beers don't really impress me, but I wish it were otherwise. German wines, on the other hand, are almost always winners and reasonably priced, too.
I don't care for the typical Perrier-esque American light beer either, but whenever anyone mentions anything about beer the snobs are quick to come out and blast the people that like to drink the corporate stuff. THAT'S what makes ME sick... They probably think your beers taste like swill too. But they just don't know what real beer tastes like, right? Besides, I was only making a joke with my comment and in effect complimenting the quality of German beers so I was caught off guard with the oh so typical attack on American corporate beer.
I drink American beer.I drink Molson. Molson is American beer.
Budweiser is foreign owned, and I avoid it because of that.
Fine Canidian American beer is the next best thing.
Bottoms up !
I wasn't aware vomiting was a disease, NBC. An outburst, perhaps, especially in the case of projectile vomiting. But outburst and outbreak are two different things.
Please fix your headline.
So, main page says "sickens" but this page still reads "Vomit outbreak strikes thousands of German children."
Made me think a bunch of people are vomiting on the children.... sounds painful.
:-))
"Vomit outbreak sickens thousands of German children" I've seen some stupid headlines here before, but this is at the top of the list. I guess seeing the other kids vomit, makes more vomit.
The "Montreal Gazette" headline is much more creative:
[SOURCE: http://www.montrealgazette.com/health/German+children+sickened+outbreak+suspected+food+borne+vomiting+virus/7313809/story.html ]
According to my sources deep inside the World Health Organization (WHO), this is the first documented instance of a vomiting virus, which is particularly distressing for virologists, since until this event nobody suspected or even imagined that any known virus actually had a stomach, esophagus, and mouth, let alone the ability to vomit, really . . .
Really! :-o
"Gastroenteritis outbreak" would have been a better headline.
Being a sick SOB, I am reminded of the pie eating contest scene in the movie "Stand By Me."
Or "Bridesmaids".
Mindestens, wollen die Kinder gern, jeden Tag in die Schule gehen!
Nicht, wie die doofen Affen bei uns!!!!!
Im vergleich zur unseren Mentalität!
Good Times!
We want to flunk out!
I know how they feel. Hope the kids get better fast and there is no lasting side affects
This probably is a food pathogen like norovirus...( see http://www.cdc.gov/norovirus/) but this is how outbreaks start as well.
I'll be watching this one closely; if news continues to come out of Europe tomorrow as normal, no worries.
If not....well.....options depend heavily on the latency of the bug in question (how long you have it before exhibiting any symptoms) and how contagious it is.
I'd take a look at the "shelter in place" video below for the basics; you should already know this stuff, but I'm betting a lot of you don't.
This is a video of Edward J. Vassallo, Ready Coordinator for the Philadelphia Office of Emergency Management, covering the core concepts...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdxT_jAWskk
If you're too lazy to build your own kit (and I'd get right on that) you can buy them.
I built my own a long time ago, and use the perishable supplies involved by going camping before they expire. Just search the term for vendors- but it's really better to build your own after checking out the options and deciding what you'd like to have available- instead of being stuck with whatever the vendor thought was the best balance of cheap and effective.
After all...it's not like he's going to get much repeat business, right?
Anyone else notice this story was copyrighted in 2011?
They're apparently "regurgitating" their stories.
Huh, they don't know by now if this is "probably" a food borne illness?
Worst title for an article ever. They really need to work on their writing skills.
"Vomit outbreak sickens thousands of German children"
Let's see...wouldn't they be vomiting because they were sickened by something else (as opposed to being sickened by the vomit outbreak itself)? I guess they could be watching other children vomiting which caused them to be sickened and then vomit, therefore causing a huge chain reaction of vomiting.
I want to vomit just thinking about it. It's seriously contagious.
This low quality writing is what happens when news organizations decide they can manage without editors while hiring people with not ready for prime time writing skills. Spell checking software is not the answer to everything. There is a challenge in trying to condense a thought into the limited number of characters allowed in a headline, but that is why junior journalists need mentoring and editing. The problem is that editors and those with experience generally have to be paid more than kids out of school and news organizations do not want to pay those salaries. I stopped reading the Washington Post after I saw "grinded" on the front page of the Style Section.
"All the institutions which have registered cases of the illness so far are probably being provided by the same caterer,"
Probably?? It doesn't seem like that would be hard to figure out to indicate they definitely know. Calling it a vomiting illness means they don't know anything yet. This could get very ugly.
Sounds like what is going on right now at my kids' elementary school here in the U.S. Little germ merchants, each and every one of them, and those gi bugs spread like wildfire.
Yuck,someone forgot to wash thier hands before returning to work!!!.
kinda reminds me of the blueberry pie eating contest in "Stand By Me'.
Ach du liebe! Der kinde hapt der pukensheetzenwasser mit stinkinpoopenhosen