The head of the German public health body tackling a deadly E.coli outbreak says it may be months before it stops. The president of the Robert Koch Institute, Reinhard Burger expressed sympathy for Spanish farmers affected by the false charge that their cucumbers were to blame. More than 1,500 people have been infected by enter haemorrhagic E.coli, which can cause the deadly haemolytic-uraemic syndrome. Seventeen people have died, 16 of them in Germany and one in Sweden. The Robert Koch Institute said at least 365 new E.coli cases were reported on Wednesday, a quarter of them involving HUS, a condition associated with bloody diarrhoea and kidney failure. The new cases include two in the US, both of whom had recently travelled to Hamburg, where many of the cases are clustered.