The death toll from a widening outbreak of fungal meningitis linked to steroid injections has risen to seven, with 65 cases now reported in nine states, officials said on Saturday.
The latest two deaths were reported in Michigan, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Those affected fell ill after receiving steroid injections linked to a pharmaceutical compounding plant in Massachusetts.
New cases in Ohio and Minnesota on Saturday brought to nine the number of states affected, officials said.
Other states with reported cases of people who fell ill after receiving the injections — primarily for back pain — are Michigan, Tennessee, Virginia, Florida, Maryland, North Carolina and Indiana.
Meningitis is an infection of the membranes covering the brain and spinal cord.
Vials of steroids linked to the outbreak were shipped to 76 facilities in 23 states and could have been used to inject thousands of patients, authorities have said.
As in other states where the outbreak has been detected, Minnesota authorities are trying to determine who else may have been infected at six locations known to have used the drugs in question, said Buddy Ferguson, public information officer for the state’s Department of Health.
“We have identified a list of approximately 950 people who did receive injectable steroids from the implicated lots,” he said.
Tennessee, where the outbreak was first detected, accounts for most of the cases, with 29, state officials said on Friday.
Three of the deaths have been in Tennessee, and one each in Virginia and Maryland.
The infected patients have shown a variety of symptoms from one to four weeks after their injections, including fever, a new or worsening headache, nausea and neurological problems that would be consistent with a deep brain stroke, the CDC said.
All the cases have been traced to three lots of the steroid prepared at New England Compounding Center in Framingham, Massachusetts. The company said it had suspended its operations while the investigation proceeds.
The Massachusetts Health Department said there were 17,676 vials of medication in each of three lots of methylprednisolone acetate sent out from July through to last month and have a shelf life of 180 days.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion