Chipotle Suffers From E. Coli Outbreak
Just recently, one of our favorite Tex-Mex restaurant, Chipotle, suffered from a dive in shares. Nine states have reported cases of E. Coli outbreaks linked to Chipotle restaurants. The restaurant has tracked the origin of the outbreak to restaurants in Washington and Oregon, and has taken precaution during the initial investigation by closing these locations. The outbreaks could be seen as the epidemic tree that we have talked about in Networks class.
The disease is transmitted by networks, branching out from restaurants to the people in contact with the food at these restaurants. The E. Coli outbreak has its own basic reproductive number, R0. As we have talked about in class, R0 = pk, where p is the probability the disease passes on successfully and k is the number of new people each affected person meets. If R0 > 1, then the disease will still persists by affecting more people in each wave. If R0 < 1, then the disease will die out eventually. In order to restrain the E. Coli outbreak from persisting indefinitely, Chipotle has closed down the restaurants at the origin of the outbreak in hope of reducing k, the number of new people exposed to the restaurants in question.
As the CNN article has stated, the investigation is still ongoing and the exact food menu in question has yet to be found out. The restaurants closed have already reopened. There are several cited quotes from Chipotle reinstating that they have been taking “aggressive actions to implement industry-leading food safety” and “mitigates risk to a level near zero”. No specifics have been given as to the exact precautions and measures taken to eliminate the p or k factors.
Sources:
http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/04/health/chipotle-e-coil-update—now-9-states/index.html