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The company’s shares fell 8% in premarket trading – the worst day since March 12, 2020, when the world went into Covid lockdown.

Shares of McDonald’s (MCD) are on track for their worst day since the pandemic began after an E. coli outbreak linked to Quarter Pounders in the western United States caused one death and 10 hospitalizations.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a food safety alert Tuesday, reporting at least 49 illnesses in 10 states. Most of the illnesses occur in Colorado and Nebraska, and most of the people who got sick ate Quarter Pounders at McDonald’s.

The incident — and investors’ immediate flight for the exits — is a reminder of Chipotle’s yearslong battle against E. coli and norovirus outbreaks at multiple locations, beginning in the summer of 2015. Over the course of three years, in which Chipotle repeatedly failed to contain numerous outbreaks, the once high-flying stock collapsed, losing two-thirds of its value.

Chipotle ultimately faced minimal fines — $25 million from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2020 — but struggled to win back grossed-out customers. The company eventually hired a new CEO, Brian Niccol, who began a new stint at Starbucks last month. Niccol helped turn Chipotle around in 2018 by retraining the company’s food handlers to promote safety. The company also tested employees for food safety standards.

A year after Niccol started, the company’s shares fully recovered from the three-year breakout nightmare.

The Chipotle outbreak is the worst-case scenario for any restaurant chain, and the E. coli situation at McDonald’s appears to be limited to a supply problem, at least for now. Chopped onions were the likely source of contamination, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration found, and McDonald’s has stopped using onions and quarter-pound beef patties in several states, the CDC says.

Still, the investigation continues and investors are tense. The company said in a statement that it is taking swift and decisive action to prevent the outbreak from spreading.

“Across the McDonald’s system, serving customers safely in every restaurant, every day, is our top priority and something we will never compromise on,” the company said.

McDonald’s is no stranger to food-related scandals. In December 2003, a McDonald’s supplier was diagnosed with an incident involving mad cow disease, causing inventory to temporarily plummet. The company said later that month that it had found no evidence that customers were avoiding the restaurant chain because of that isolated incident.

In 2004, filmmaker Morgan Spurlock’s hit documentary ‘Super Size Me’ sharply criticized McDonald’s for serving unhealthy food. The film and its subject matter received widespread media attention, and McDonald’s dropped its super-sized menu options later that year. But investors weren’t phased: The stock price rose by about a quarter that year.

In 2011, the company was found to have used a type of beef, colloquially known as ‘pink slime’, treated with a chemical known as ammonium hydroxide. The company announced the following year that it was no longer using pink slime, but rumors of continued use dogged the company for a decade — and McDonald’s had yet to release a statement in 2021 to set the record straight.

But McDonald’s most famous food-related scandal was the 1992 hot coffee lawsuit, in which a woman spilled coffee on her lap and suffered third-degree burns. A jury agreed with her claim that the coffee was unreasonably hot, which the American Museum of Tort Law found it was. The coffee was “30 to 40 degrees hotter than coffee served by other companies,” the rights museum said. The plaintiff in that case was initially awarded nearly $3 million, but after an appeal she settled for less, about $480,000.