Overview
- Federal tallies show more than 11,500 domestic cyclosporiasis reports this season with the CDC confirming roughly 4,100 lab-confirmed cases and thousands more still under review, a gap that reflects testing backlogs and staggered state reporting, according to Friday updates.
- The largest multistate cluster has been epidemiologically linked to shredded iceberg lettuce sourced from Taylor Farms de Mexico and served at some Taco Bell locations, and Taylor Farms issued a voluntary recall after interviews and traceback pointed to its product.
- Product-level laboratory confirmation remains limited and an earlier FDA positive lettuce test was reclassified as a false positive, leaving investigators reliant on patient interviews and supply-chain tracebacks to tie illnesses to specific lots and growers.
- The FDA has opened a separate traceback into a newly reported cluster of at least 72 cases that has not been linked to a product, underscoring that multiple simultaneous outbreaks may be driving this season’s surge.
- Michigan has been hardest hit, reporting more than 8,000 cases and many hospitalizations, and public-health officials urge that Cyclospora spreads through contaminated produce or water, often takes days to two weeks to cause symptoms, is treated with TMP-SMX, and can only be reliably killed on produce by cooking to about 158°F.