Elizabethkingia has made 54 people sick since November in a dozen counties in south central Wisconsin.
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Most states don’t get more than five to 10 cases a year, so this represents a huge spike in infection rates.
“The infancy of patients appropriation this infection are over a age of 65, and all patients have a story of during slightest one underlying critical illness”, a matter from a Wisconsin Department of Health Services said. The bacteria, which is typically found into the soil of reservoirs and rivers, was not believed to pose harm to humans until last fall. The infection was named after Elizabeth O. King, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) microbiologist who is credited with being the first person to isolate the bacterium.
Among them, 17 individuals are no more, though there is no confirmation that they have lost their lives due to the infection or if it was due to patients’ underlying health conditions.
According to the MI health department, the rare bloodstream infection known as Elizabethkingiam which had earlier sickened many people in Wisconsin since November has now affected a resident of MI. Those who have been stricken by the blood infection in the past commonly also suffered from weakened immune systems, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, reports. The only way of knowing for sure if someone is infected requires a laboratory test, so don’t make a home diagnosis and don’t delay. “We can tell you we are reasonably certain that groundwater is not the source”. This also means the bacteria may come from the same source. The state’s health officials have already started working with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on the issue. MI is now partial of that effort.
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“Michigan has worked closely with a CDC and Wisconsin Health Department to warning a provider village about a Wisconsin conflict and to safeguard early approval of intensity cases in a state”, Dr. Eden Wells, arch medical executive of a Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, pronounced in a statement. “Lots of people are working around the clock, a very wide net has been cast looking at lots of different possibilities”, Skinner said. There lies further concern with this infection spike in that it is within close proximity to the Flint, Michigan water crisis, whose tap water lead levels are so high that it can greatly affect the immune systems of the population, making it a potential hotbed of infection.
