The Illinois Department of Public Health announced Tuesday a northern Illinois resident who died had the same strain of a bacteria responsible for a deadly outbreak in Wisconsin.
The IDPH’s Melaney Arnold says the department has been working with the federal Centers for Disease Control, along with health officials in Wisconsin and Michigan, on the outbreak associated with Elizabethkingia anophelis.
“We did send out an alert asking hospitals to report cases of Elizabethkingia, and if they do have isolates, to go ahead and send it to IDPH, and we would then send it along to CDC for testing,” she says.
Arnold says the cause of the outbreak is unknown. The bacteria is common in the soil and water. It rarely, if ever, causes infections, so much about the outbreak is still a mystery.
But officials do know something about those infected.
“This type of bacteria typically doesn’t make people sick. All the victims in this outbreak, however, had serious health problems,” she says.
Arnold says most of the people with confirmed infections were also over age 65.
The bacteria has so far been implicated in 57 cases, with 18 deaths, in Wisconsin and one death in Michigan.
