Sarah McCormick says all seven of her holiday party fell ill at the Steigenberger Aqua Magic Hotel with four of them requiring IV drips, including her 14-year-old daughter.
Incredibly as well as contracting bacterial infection Shigella- a bacterial infection from contaminated food or water often associated with food poisoning – her husband Thomas also caught Salmonella.
The couple say they are still ill having returned home from the resort just days before Brits John and Susan Cooper died in their hotel room.
Sarah also claims that on site doctors misrepresented her families symptoms on medical forms as diarrohea having originally given them a different diagnosis.
Sarah and hubby Thomas splashed out £5,000 on their “most expensive every holiday” to Hurghada in Egypt along with their daughters Lexi, eight, and Paige, 14.
But the 36-year-old said "it was a complete disaster".
She said: "It is a joke to call it a five star hotel more like a two star. It was a nightmare.”
Sarah said after arriving she soon noticed things were wrong.
While in the swimming pool she spotted a hotel worker cleaning algae off the side with a dirty cloth which he then rinsed in the family pool.
The mum-of-two from Wimborne, Dorset said: “It was horrible. We were a hundred yards away and as soon as we saw him doing that we got out the pool.
"There was no health and safety.”
Sarah said that hand sanitizers on the entrances were empty and that plagues of flies were in the restaurants.
She added: “The flies were horrendous. They were all over the work surfaces in the restaurant and the bread rolls."
Three days into their holiday her husband Thomas, 41, fell violently ill then her daughter Paige a day later before Sarah herself was struck down.
Sarah said: “We had severe stomach cramps, sickness and diarrohea. We could hardly get out of bed it was horrendous.
"I was really worried as my husband who is a real man’s man couldn’t even lift his head off the pillow he was so weak."
She said it was after the drips had finished that she noticed that the doctor had changed his earlier diagnosis to Travellers Diarrhoea on the medical forms.
She added: "He said he couldn’t change the new diagnosis it as he should have sent us to hospital and anyway he said its cheaper for us. But he had never even mentioned the hospital until the forms.
“So I knew then there was definitely something going on, some sort of cover up over illness there."
They later returned home still ill where Sarah and Thomas were later confirmed with Shigella. Thomas also has confirmed Salmonella.
Who were John and Susan Cooper?
John Cooper, 69, and his 64-year-old wife Susan died in mysterious circumstances after holidaying at the Steigenberger Aqua Magic Hotel in Egypt on August 21.
Following the couple's death, Thomas Cook announced they were evacuating 300 of their guests from the hotel.
Speaking to the BBC following their deaths, devastated daughter Kelly, 40, said her parents were "killed by something in the hotel room" and claimed "something smelt funny" when she arrived at their hotel room that morning.
Nick Harris Head of Travel from Simpson Millar solicitors is representing Sarah and has been contacted by other families with confirmed Shigella diagnosis from the resort.
He said news of the medical diagnosis "implicates Shigella again as a problem at the resort".
Nick added: "If, as these documents seem to suggest, guests’ medical conditions are being misrepresented as simple holiday tummies at this hotel it would be outrageous behaviour. Shigella Dysentary can kill people.
It could mean that any investigation into illness at this hotel might be tainted with the possibility of the true extent of illness being under reported. It is a very worrying turn of events with everything that has happened.
"People could have been unwittingly spreading infection for weeks and infecting many others. Thomas Cook needs to let worried customers know what has been happening at this resort.”
What is Shigella?
Shigella is a highly infectious condition which can cause diarrhoea and stomach cramps.
It is a common cause of food poisoning or can be found in contented water or in swimming pools.
Salmonella is a common food poisoning bug associated with undercooked food.
A Thomas Cook spokesperson told Sun Online: “The safety and wellbeing of our customers is always our first priority. That’s why we removed 300 customers from the Steigenberger Aqua Magic hotel after receiving further reports of illness.
“We audit all 3,000 of our core hotels every year and so far this calendar year we have removed 47 hotels for health and safety reasons and a further 150 which did not meet our strict quality criteria. As well as the audits our quality teams regularly inspect our properties and provide support, guidance and training to help hotels improve. We last audited Steigenberger Aqua Magic in July 2018.
“We are contacting every Thomas Cook customer that has returned from staying at the hotel since 22 August and we have put a dedicated team together to prioritise all complaints from this hotel."
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