A total of 18 Wisconsin residents with confirmed infections have died, though it is not clear if the infections were directly attributable to the deaths due to the fact that the majority of those infected were over the age of 65 and had preexisting comorbidities.
There are also four suspected cases of infection in the state with one associated death among those cases. These cases cannot be confirmed because there are no longer specimens available for testing.
Both a Michigan resident and a resident from Illinois with confirmed infections related to the Wisconsin outbreak have also died. A cluster of ten infections in Illinois were found to belong to a strain of Elizabethkingia not associated with the outbreak in Wisconsin. Recently, Elizabethkingia was detected in a Wisconsin infant — this too was found to be a strain unrelated to the outbreak.
Disease detectives from the WDHS and the CDC are conducting an ongoing investigation into the outbreak. The source of the infection remains unknown.
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Sepsis raises late death risk by 16%, study finds
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