According to the BBC, the European E. Coli episode is winding down:

Germany’s health minister says new E. coli infections from a deadly outbreak are dropping significantly and the worst of the illness is over. Daniel Bahr said he was cautiously optimistic the outbreak had peaked, but warned that more deaths were expected as new cases emerged each day.

The outbreak has so far left 24 dead, infected 2,400 and left hundreds with a complication that attacks the kidneys.   Earlier, the EU proposed 150m euros (£134m) of compensation for farmers.But agriculture ministers said they wanted much more and that their producers of fruit and vegetables should be compensated for the full amount of their losses, estimated at up to 417m euros (£372m) a week.

The outbreak was wrongly blamed on Spanish cucumbers last week by the health authorities in northern Germany, the centre of the outbreak. Investigators are still trying to find the real origin of the new strain of enterohaemorrhagic E. coli (EHEC). New cases are still being reported every day, including 94 in Germany on Tuesday.

For further reference, see the World Health Organization’s Enterohaemorrhagic Escherichia coli (EHEC) Fact Sheet, and the relevant Wikipedia entry,Escherichia_coli_O157:H7.