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U.S. closes investigation into E. coli outbreak linked to onions
The U.S. government said Tuesday it has closed its investigation into an E. coli outbreak tied to McDonald’s Quarter Pounder hamburgers after determining there is no longer a safety risk.
The outbreak, which was first reported Oct. 22, sickened at least 104 people in 14 states, including 34 who were hospitalized, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. One person in Colorado died and four people developed a potentially life-threatening kidney disease complication.
The FDA, which conducted the investigation along with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and state health departments, linked the outbreak to yellow onions distributed by California-based Taylor Farms and served raw on Quarter Pounders at McDonald’s restaurants in Colorado, Kansas, Wyoming and other states.
There have been no new cases reported since Oct. 21, when McDonald’s pulled the Quarter Pounder off its menu in the affected states, the CDC said Tuesday. Taylor Farms initiated a voluntary recall of yellow onions on Oct. 22.
Federal and state health officials in Colorado didn’t find the strain of E. coli that caused the illnesses in onions it tested or in any samples from the environment. But they concluded that evidence showed that recalled yellow onions were the likely source of the outbreak.
“McDonald’s is no longer serving recalled onions and there does not appear to be a continued food safety concern related to this outbreak,” the FDA said Tuesday in a statement.
McDonald’s briefly pulled Quarter Pounders from 3,000 U.S. stores as a result of the outbreak, then narrowed that to 900 stores once testing had pinpointed onions — and not hamburger patties — as the likely source of E. coli. The company found an alternate supplier and resumed selling Quarter Pounders with slivered onions at all U.S. stores last month.
But the outbreak has hurt demand. In mid-November, McDonald’s said it planned to spend $100 million to bring customers back to stores, including $65 million that will go directly to the hardest-hit franchisees.
Chicago-based McDonald’s wouldn’t say Tuesday whether its sales have returned to normal levels in the affected regions. But it thanked U.S. regulators for their quick action and said it remains confident in its rigorous food-safety standards.
McDonald’s last major food-safety issue happened in 2018, when more than 500 people contracted an intestinal illness after eating its salads.
McDonald’s also declined to comment Tuesday on legal action against the company as a result of the E. coli outbreak.
Nicole and Richard West of Townsend, Montana, are suing McDonald’s after their 11-month-old daughter, Logan, was hospitalized in October with E. coli poisoning. The toddler ate a few bites of her father’s Quarter Pounder hamburger with onions during a family road trip on Oct. 2.
She fell ill a few days later with severe vomiting and diarrhea. Her mother rushed her to the hospital, where she was found to be infected with E. coli O157:H7, which can cause life-threatening illness, particularly in young children.
Richard West also fell ill but didn’t seek medical attention because he was at home caring for the family’s other children. He lost more than two weeks of work as a truck driver because of the outbreak and the family faces a barrage of medical expenses.
Nicole West said Tuesday that Logan’s health has improved but the outbreak has shaken the family’s confidence in the fast-food giant.
“With kids, when you want to go out to eat, they want to go to McDonald’s. They want to get a Happy Meal,” West said. “But we just don’t trust it anymore.”
U.S. job openings rose last month, though hiring slowed
WASHINGTON | The number of job postings in the United States rebounded in October from a 3 1/2 year low in September, a sign that businesses are still seeking workers even though hiring has cooled.
Openings rose 5% to 7.7 million from 7.4 million in September, the Labor Department said Tuesday. The increase suggests that job gains could pick up in the coming months. Still, the latest figure is down significantly from 8.7 million job postings a year ago.
Last month, job openings rose sharply in professional and business services, a category that includes engineers, managers, and accountants, as well as in the restaurant and hotel and information technology industries.
The number of people quitting their jobs rose in October, a sign of confidence in the job market. And layoffs tumbled to just 1.6 million — below the lowest figures in the two decades that preceded the 2020 pandemic.
Taken as a whole, Tuesday’s figures suggest that the job market might be stabilizing at a modest level, with hiring moderate but layoffs uncommonly low. The unemployment rate is at a low 4.1%, even though job gains slowed sharply in October, according to the monthly jobs report. The slowdown in job growth last month reflected mainly the impact of hurricanes and a strike at Boeing.
“There’s a lot of cause for optimism,” said Cory Stahle, an economist at Indeed, the job listings website. “The fact that job openings ticked up is always an encouraging sign.”
Tuesday’s figures mean there are now 1.1 available jobs for each unemployed worker, a healthy figure. Before the pandemic there were usually more unemployed people than openings.
Still, the latest ratio is down from a peak of roughly two job openings per unemployed person two years ago. Businesses have pulled back from the hiring frenzy that occurred as the economy emerged from the pandemic recession.
Tuesday’s report, known as the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, or JOLTS, showed that overall hiring slowed in October. Total hiring slipped to 5.3 million from 5.6 million, though that decline reflected hurricane-related disruptions.
The JOLTS report is separate from the monthly jobs figures, which will be released Friday. That report is forecast to show a net gain of nearly 210,000 jobs in November, up from an anemic 12,000 in October.
Tuesday’s report also showed that the number of Americans who quit their jobs rebounded in October to 3.4 million, after having reached a four-year low in September. An increase in quitting is a good sign for the economy, because it suggests that people are confident enough to search for new job opportunities.
The Federal Reserve is watching the jobs data closely. Any sign that hiring is sharply weakening could encourage Fed officials to cut their key interest rate more quickly, to try to bolster borrowing and spending and support the economy.
Nearly 30% of U.S. drugstores closed in one decade
Nearly three out of 10 U.S. drugstores that were open during the previous decade had closed by 2021, new research shows.
Black and Latino neighborhoods were most vulnerable to the retail pharmacy closures, which can chip away at already-limited care options in those communities, researchers said in a study published Tuesday in Health Affairs.
The trend has potentially gained momentum since the study’s timeframe, because many drugstores are still struggling. In the last three years, the major chains Walgreens and CVS have closed hundreds of additional stores, and Rite Aid shrank as it went through a bankruptcy reorganization.
Drugstores have been dealing with shrinking reimbursement for prescriptions, rising costs and changing customer shopping habits. The chains been closing money-losing stores and transferring prescription files to more profitable locations.
The study found that more than 29% of the nearly 89,000 retail U.S. pharmacies that operated between 2010 and 2020 had closed by 2021. That amounts to more than 26,000 stores.
Researchers using data from the National Council for Prescription Drug Programs found that the number of U.S. pharmacies had actually increased from 2010 to 2017 because of store openings, but the pace of closings picked up starting in 2018.
They also highlighted which stores were more likely to close. Those include independent pharmacies, which were more likely than chain stores to be in Black, Latino and low-income neighborhoods.
Pharmacies in neighborhoods with higher rates of patients on government-funded Medicaid and Medicare also were at greater risk for closing, said Dima Qato, a University of Southern California pharmacy professor who was the study’s lead author. Those programs tend to reimburse less than private health insurance.
Researchers also noted that the exclusion of some pharmacies, particularly independent drugstores, from pharmacy benefit manager networks can hurt. That can mean fewer prescriptions and customers visit for those stores.
Retail drugstores can be important sources for vaccinations, contraception, overdose prevention and opioid use disorder treatments, aside from prescriptions, Qato said. She noted that Black and Latino communities often have fewer pharmacies to begin with, so store closings hit residents of those communities particularly hard.
“There aren’t many other options for them,” she said.
—From AP reports
