The Ottawa Citizen reports that Ottawa's public health department has recorded a case of salmonella in a high school not served by the caterer believed to have been the source of the recent outbreak.

The case at Merivale High School may be an instance where an older student caught salmonella from a younger sibling, said Eric Leclair, a spokesman for the health department.

The tally of people who've contracted the foodborne illness since the department declared an outbreak remains at 50, though only 44 of them are believed to be connected via contaminated food delivered by a franchise of The Lunch Lady, a service that delivers hot food for children's lunches.

The health department is still waiting for the results of lab tests on Lunch Lady food - meat used in lasagna and tacos, plus sour cream, cottage cheese and some spices - that would confirm the connection. Those are now expected by Friday, Leclair said.

Ottawa Public Health reports this afternoon that the number of confirmed cases in the Lunch-Lady related salmonella outbreak has risen to 37, up from 27 on Friday. The confirmed cases are primarily children, 15-months to 18-years-old, along with four adults, although two adults appear unrelated to this outbreak.

The schools and daycare with a confirmed case include:

• Bayview Public School
• École élémentaire publique Des Sentiers
• Tiny Hoppers Daycare (50 Colchester, Kanata)
• Steve MacLean Public School
• Stittsville Public School
• Turnbull School
• École élémentaire catholique Jean-Paul II
• W.O. Mitchell Elementary School

Four more children have been diagnosed with salmonella since yesterday, as the city’s public health department continues to investigate an outbreak of food poisoning that appears to have spread through a caterer serving hot lunches at schools and daycares.

The Ottawa Citizen reports there have now been 27 lab-confirmed cases of the food-poisoning bacteria since Public Health declared an outbreak early this week, including 23 children and four adults. (Two of the adults are included in the tally even though their cases are believed to be unrelated.) Friday afternoon, the health department also added two schools to the list of those where children have become sick: Bayvew Public School and Ecole élémentaire Des Sentiers.

Investigators are still analysing food from a kitchen run by a franchise of The Lunch Lady, trying to confirm suspicions that its meat lasagna and beef tacos were contaminated. All six schools and one daycare where children are known to have got sick are served by one franchise of The Lunch Lady, which delivers meals to kids whose parents pay for the service.

The results of the lab analysis are expected to take a few more days, perhaps even until next Wednesday, said Public Health spokesman John Steinbachs. Bacterial cultures take time to grow, and they then have to be compared with samples from afflicted patients to see if they match.

In the meantime, two Lunch Lady kitchens — the one on Boyd Avenue where investigators have been concentrating their efforts, and another in Kanata — are closed, said their owner, Jonathan Morris.

“We don’t know what the source of the contamination is, and until we do, we’re not going to be making or serving food,” he said. Parents whose children get meals from those kitchens will have to make other arrangements for at least next week, Morris said.

“It’s harder as a parent than it is as a business owner,” Morris said. “I’m a parent, most of my staff are parents, and we serve food to a lot of them. These kids getting sick, that’s what’s, well, that’s what making me sick. The business is ... that’s not even secondary.”

Ottawa Public Health has now confirmed 20 cases of salmonella, including 16 children between 15 months and 14-years-old, and four adults which they believe might have originated from The Lunch Lady Group caterer.

The owner of the Canadian company told CBC News Wednesday she is devastated by the news and called the outbreak a "mystery".

"It's horribly painful because we love serving kids everyday," Ruthie Burd said over the phone from her home in Markham, Ont.

"We do everything we can to provide a reliable, safe service for the kids we serve."

"We have very strict guidelines for all sorts of things when it comes to food and kids," she said, "We empathize with parents in this whole situation. We really want to know what it is and what we can put in place to prevent anything."

As a parent, that doesn’t tell me much about the food safety training, standards, buying practices, personal hygiene and overall food safety culture in those kitchens.

The Lunch Lady has a blog but it hasn’t been updated since Aug., 2011. They have a statement about culture and sustainability but nothing about what is done so kids don’t barf from Lunch lady lunches. There is a statement about food safety, how it’s all government inspected and they pay attention to recall notices. Perhaps it would be more reassuring to parents if the “strict food safety and quality control policies set out by The Lunch Lady Group head office” were available for perusal.

Public health said 11 officials have been reassigned to deal with the salmonella outbreak, which also hospitalized three people. All have since been released.

They have their hands full, one doctor said, trying to contact families of children who may have consumed contaminated food.

"We're talking not only to the families of ill children, but parents of well siblings or children that did not become ill," said Dr. Rosamund Lewis, who added 50 families are being interviewed regarding one daycare alone.