The national E. coli outbreak is hitting closer and closer to home.
According to the Lincoln-Lancaster County Health Department, a woman in her early 20s was hospitalized earlier this month after eating tainted spinach. She is still recovering.
Although he failed to say whether she was a student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, she was identified as a Lancaster County resident.
Nebraska has now become part of the top-five most affected states form the E. coli outbreak that resulted from contaminated spinach, according to the Food and Drug Administration. Nebraska has tallied nine cases of the infection - including one in Lancaster County - to date.
Doug Zatechka, director of housing at UNL, said he is waiting until he gets information from higher sources that spinach is perfectly safe for public use.
"Nobody has yet ruled it as safe to us," Zatechka said.
On Thursday, it will have been two weeks since spinach was pulled from the dining halls.
Elizabeth Stumbaugh, freshman psychology major, said she eats salads in the dining halls regularly, but didn't know of the E. coli outbreak.
"I don't mind that there's no spinach," she said. "There are enough other substitutes."
Tom Safranek, state epidemiologist, said all of Nebraska's nine cases match those of the national outbreak victims.
Nationally, the source of the outbreak has been pinpointed to three California counties: Monterey, San Benito and Santa Clara. Spinach grown in the rest of the United States has not been implicated in the current E. coli outbreak. The public can be confident that spinach grown in the non-implicated areas can be consumed, according to the FDA.
Although the source has been found, don't expect to be garnishing a salad with this famous green at the dining halls any time soon.
The E. coli found in the spinach was first targeted in August and has grown to a national outbreak since. So far, there have been 175 cases of illness, 93 hospitalizations and one death. The death was of an old woman, who, after testing a bag of spinach found in her refrigerator, died due to lung failure.
Lung failure is not common to the E. coli bacteria, however. Diarrhea and bloody stools are the most common signs, along with stomach cramping and flu-like symptom, according to the FDA.
