What is the health department doing to find out if it was food poisoning or not?
Two things. First, to find a clue to what made people sick, public health workers are talking to many sick and well people to see what they remember eating. We can see if the sick people ate things different from the well people. Perhaps we can find out that the sick people ate something that the well people did not eat. This is called an epidemiological study. Second, laboratory tests must also be done to try to find the cause. Scientists at TDH and CDC are studying stool samples from patients and food samples from the school. These samples have to be prepared, then shipped to labs in Austin and Atlanta, then grown in the laboratory. Once a germ is growing, it must be analyzed. This process often takes weeks.
