No action will be taken against hospital caterers after some 100 patients suffered food poisoning last month, because lab tests have proven “inconclusive”, the Health Ministry said.
A spokeswoman for Health Minister Chris Fearne told the Times of Malta that 97 patients across three State hospitals and the newly privatised Karen Grech Hospital were confirmed to have suffered food poisoning last month. The source of the virus, however, remains unknown.
The four hospitals are all provided with food from the same service. The spokeswoman said: “The investigation has been closed. The outbreak has been confirmed to be caused by norovirus, but the exact source remains indeterminate.”
She later added that this was not out of the ordinary.
More than half of the international reviews carried out on norovirus outbreaks in hospitals failed to identify the source, she said when this newspaper asked why no action was being taken against the hospital caterers.
Last month, this newspaper reported how the symptoms that gave rise to a suspicion of food poisoning at Mater Dei and Karin Grech hospitals had also been noticed in the Sir Paul Boffa physiotherapy department and St Vincent de Paul home for the elderly.
The outbreak was caused by norovirus,but the exact source remains indeterminate
The spread prompted the authorities to launch an inquiry, with patients reporting nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea, among other symptoms, all within hours of each other.
At the time, the Health Ministry had said it was taking the situation “very seriously”.
The health ministry has since explained that the Superintendence of Public Health oversaw laboratory tests to try to determine the origin of the virus.
Investigations were carried out by environmental health officials and laboratory officials, who performed a number of inspections, observations and tests, the spokeswoman said.
“A number of scientific tests were done on samples of food served in hospitals that were taken from the service provider. Special kits were procured purposefully for this investigation, specifically to look for the presence of norovirus in the food samples,” the spokeswoman said.
She explained that the tests produced a negative result but did not say when the food sampled had been produced. At the time of the outbreak, Mr Fearne said the same symptoms had also spread from patients to a number of healthcare professionals and he described the situation as “contagious”.
Patients at Mater Dei Hospital told the Times of Malta that about an hour after consuming their evening meal on Thursday, December 15, they experienced sharp cramps that persisted for a few days.
One patient said that he had been surrounded by others with a similar reaction to the food provided at the hospital.
Hospital staff then approached patients to find out what they had eaten for dinner in an attempt to isolate what could have caused the abdominal problems.
This is not the first of such outbreaks in Maltese hospitals. In 2006, an outbreak of some 45 cases of gastroenteritis affecting patients, and another two affecting members of the staff, were reported at St Luke’s Hospital.