Highlighted below are six disease and virus outbreaks currently making headlines across the country, listed below alphabetically.
1. Elizabethkingia
CDC officials are currently working with the state health departments of Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin to handle an outbreak of Elizabethkingia, which has caused a number of mysterious infections in the region. In fact, the CDC categorized the Wisconsin outbreak as the largest of its kind that the organization has ever investigated. As of April 20, the Wisconsin Department of Health Services had reported 59 confirmed cases of Elizabethkingia anophelis in the state, and there may be more.
In March, one western Michigan resident died after developing an infection from the bacteria. In Illinois, 10 residents have been diagnosed with the infection, and six of them have died. That said, the strain in Illinois is different than that of the Wisconsin outbreak.
2. Legionnaire's disease
The number of deaths attributed to an outbreak of Legionnaire's disease in Genesee County, Mich. — where the city of Flint is located — rose to 12 in mid April. Although a definitive link has yet to be established between the city's water supply switch from Detroit's water system to the Flint River and the outbreak, the timing of the first infections coincides with the period where Flint began to draw its water from the river, and more than half of the infected individuals had a laboratory-confirmed common source of exposure. All total, 91 cases of the infection were reported during a 17-month window from 2014 to 2015.
3. Measles
Yuba River Charter School in Nevada City, Calif., shut down temporarily in March because of a measles case. Even when classes resumed, nearly a third of the students enrolled in kindergarten through eighth grade were barred from attending class through April 8 due to unmet immunization requirements. Across the country in Tennessee, the Shelby County (Tenn.) Health Department and Tennessee Department of Health identified six cases of the measles in county residents on April 25.
4. Mumps
On Wednesday, Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Conn., publicly announced a mumps outbreak that was identified by officials on March 22. The New England university is hardly alone in its battle against the highly infectious disease: Health officials at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., confirmed an outbreak has infected 40 students since March. Mumps outbreaks have also been confirmed at the University of Dayton (Ohio), University of Missouri in Columbia, Purdue University in Lafayette, Ind., and in North Dakota.
5. Norovirus
PLOS Medicine released a reported Tuesday that suggests norovirus outbreaks cause nearly 700 million infections and more than 200,000 deaths a year worldwide, resulting in $60 billion in associated costs. In the U.S. specifically, health officials from the University of Rochester (N.Y.) announced a norovirus outbreak sickened 141 students in mid April, up dramatically from the 20 cases originally announced on April 9. Additionally, 28 students in a residence hall at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis were infected with suspected norovirus during the first week of April.
6. Zika
Federal health official have been keeping an eye on the Zika virus outbreak that has been sweeping South and Central America and is creeping into the United States. According to the CDC's most recent data, there are 1,025 Zika cases in the U.S. including both cases in the states and the territories.
In response to the outbreak, the Food and Drug Administration recently granted Quest Diagnostics, a clinical laboratory services company, an Emergency Use Authorization for Quest's Zika Virus RNA Qualitative Real-Time RT-PCR test, a proprietary molecular test to detect Zika virus in humans. The CDC and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration announced guidelines to protect outdoor workers, healthcare and lab workers, business travelers and individuals working in mosquito control from exposure to the Zika virus.
Despite numerous efforts to educate the public, recent survey data from InCrowd, a provider of real-time market intelligence to life sciences and healthcare firms, shows 20 percent of pregnant or would-be pregnant women in the U.S. are not aware of the dangers of Zika virus.