Two Cobb County women are being tested for E. coli after eating at a local Chipotle.
Jenny Tuggle, a 31-year-old Air Force veteran, says it's been a week since she and a co-worker had lunch at the restaurant in Kennesaw.
“It was pretty bad. I was on the toilet for a few hours,” she said.
The chain is linked to over 50 E. coli cases in nine states, according to the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control. Tuggle suspects they may be Georgia's first.
Cases have been reported nationwide — in California, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Oregon and Washington — with the majority reported in Oregon and Washington in October.
"At this time, there are no confirmed cases of E. coli linked to Chipotle in Georgia," Chris Arnold, the company's communications director, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The CDC continues to investigate the cause of the outbreak.
“It's kind of weird that two people, who normally don't get sick, got sick the same time from eating the same place,” Tuggle said.
Tuggle's co-worker Kerri Hernandez said called in sick on Monday. Neither she nor Tuggle had even heard of Chipotle's issues.
“I was pretty shocked and the first thing I did was Google and it popped up pretty much what both of us were experiencing,” Tuggle said.
Tuggle expects medical tests back in a few days.
Infectious disease specialist Dr. Robin Dretler says the fact that the women's symptoms hit so quickly makes it less likely they're part of the E. coli outbreak.
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