College Sports Information Directors of America

On July 12^th , the Philadelphia Department of Public Health (PDPH) received a report of gastrointestinal illness among 800 attendees of the CoSIDA conference. The conference included attendees from locations across the United States and Canada. The symptoms described included nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, chills and fatigue.

The Division of Disease Control’s investigation consisted of a review of conference events and menus, inspection of the hotel kitchen, special event caterer, and restaurants surrounding the hotel. We also performed a case control study to determine risk factors for becoming ill. The on-site inspection was conducted by our Office of Food Protection (OFP) and included all establishments that served food to the attendees, including the hotel kitchen, hotel restaurants, hotel coffee shop, caterer of the Franklin Institute event and selected restaurants in the vicinity of the hotel where attendees reported eating.  The inspections did not reveal any major violations in food handling and preparation. Also none of the hotel kitchen staff reported that they were ill prior to the conference.

The case control study was conducted by PDPH to determine if a particular food item could be implicated as the cause of illness and to determine if there were any risk factors for becoming ill. The study consisted of administering a questionnaire to both those who became ill (cases) and those that did not become ill (controls). The questionnaire was sent via email to all attendees of the conference and all were asked to respond. We received 208 responses, 55 (26%) of whom were ill based on our case definition.

Analysis of the responses from our cases revealed that there were three “waves of illness”. The first wave was those who reported onset of symptoms between July 2^nd and July 3^rd, the second wave were those who reported symptom onset between July 4^th and July 6^th and the third wave were those who reported onset between July 7^th and July 9^th. Overall, most of the ill attendees reported onset between July 4^th and July 6^th. There was evidence of secondary transmission (illness resulting from contact with a sick individual) as evidenced by symptoms developing in family members who did not attend the meetings.

After investigation and analysis of the data from the case-control study, it was determined that no food item(s) could be implicated as the source or cause of the illness. It is most likely that a conference attendee(s) became ill prior to the conference and then illness was spread from person-to-person at the various events. The evidence points to a virus as a cause of the illness, but since there were no clinical specimens from patients available for testing, PDPH is unable to definitively identify any offending organism.