The head of the German public health body tackling a deadly E.coli outbreak says it may be months before it stops.

德国负责处理致命性大肠杆菌爆发疫情的公共卫生团体负责人称，此次疫情可能需要持续数月。

Spain says its farmers have lost millions of euros since being wrongly accused
Reinhard Burger, president of the Robert Koch Institute, told the BBC "we may never know" the infections' source.

He expressed sympathy for Spanish farmers affected¹ by the false charge that their cucumbers were to blame.

More than 1,500 people have been infected by enterohaemorrhagic E.coli (EHEC肠出血性大肠杆菌), which can cause the deadly haemolytic-uraemic syndrome² (HUS溶血性尿毒综合症).

Seventeen people have died - 16 of them in Germany and one in Sweden.

Meanwhile, Russia has banned the import of fresh vegetables from European Union countries. A quarter of all vegetables exported from the EU are sent to Russia.

Russian consumer protection agency head Gennady Onishchenko announced the ban and criticised health standards within the EU.

"This shows that Europe's lauded³（赞美，称赞） health legislation - one which Russia is being urged to adopt - does not work," he said.

Spread to US

At least 365 new E.coli cases were reported on Wednesday, a quarter of them involving HUS, a condition associated with bloody⁴ diarrhoea（腹泻） and kidney failure, the Robert Koch Institute said.

The new cases include two in the US, both of whom had recently travelled to Hamburg, where many of the cases are clustered.

Professor Burger said it was impossible to say how long before the last case would appear:

"The number [of cases] will come down but how long it will take I am not sure. It could be weeks, months," he told the BBC.

The length of time would depend on whether infected food was still in warehouses⁵, and whether the original source was still active, he said.