At least 64 people have been hospitalised with suspected food poisoning in Vietnam’s Quang Tri province, with authorities suspecting bread from a local bakery as the likely cause.
The Huong Hoa Regional General Hospital said it admitted 18 patients on Friday in addition to the 46 the previous day, according to Lao Dong. One patient was discharged, leaving 63 people still receiving treatment at the facility.
The patients started arriving at around 6.30am on Thursday, with symptoms like high fever, diarrhoea, vomiting, abdominal pain, fatigue, and dehydration, the news outlet Vietnam quoted the hospital chief Nguyen Viet Duc as saying.
They were given intravenous fluids, oral rehydration and antibiotics, he said, and were now in stable condition.
The hospital said that the patients were getting treated across its emergency, intensive care, poison control or toxicology units, as well as the infectious diseases department. It had deployed additional medical staff to manage the sudden influx of patients during the holiday period of the Reunification Day and the International Workers’ Day.
The patients who remain hospitalised are mostly aged 11 to 15, but also include a 28-month-old and an 87-year-old.
Authorities found after speaking to families that all the affected people had consumed bread within the same period from a bakery in Tan Son village.
The bakery had supplied 44 loaves of bread on Thursday to the Huong Loc Ethnic Minority Boarding Primary and Secondary School, where many of those affected consumed it.
Authorities said the establishment held a household business registration certificate and had made a commitment to ensure food safety. They added that food samples from the bakery had been collected for testing to determine the cause of the suspected poisoning.
In the wake of the incident, the local people’s committee ordered the bakery to temporarily suspend operations until further notice while the investigation was carried out.
No deaths have been reported so far.
