Biosecurity

A Mysterious Disease Is Killing People in Wisconsin

SINCE NOVEMBER, 54 PEOPLE in Wisconsin have one by one fallen ill with an obscure kind of bacteria calledElizabethkingia. Fifteen have died from the infection.

Elizabethkingia is common in the environment—in soil, in water—but it rarely gets people sick. Cases pop up in ones and twos, usually in people with weak immune systems, says Michael Bell, deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s healthcare quality division. “The fact that we’re seeing more than four dozen cases, that is a very large outbreak.” In fact, an outbreak of this size forElizabethkingia, named for the bacteriologist who first isolated it in the 1950s, is unprecedented. The bacteria infects the blood, causing fever, chills, and shortness of breath.