America’s Center for Disease Control (CDC) is warning about a new bacterial outbreak that could have as high as a 50% fatality rate among infected people. Burkholderia pseudomallei has been found around the Gulf Coast and has been officially declared an endemic by the CDC. Three cases of infection have already been confirmed.
According to the CDC, an endemic is defined as “a constant amount of that specific disease present in a geographic location, like a state or country.”
The news comes just one week after the CDC issued a warning about a new viral threat from HMPV, which has symptoms similar to Covid and is spread in the same way. And this comes as the world finally got out of the Covid Crisis. Symptoms commonly associated with HMPV include cough, fever, nasal congestion, and shortness of breath. Clinical symptoms of HMPV infection may progress to bronchitis or pneumonia and are similar to other viruses that cause upper and lower respiratory infections.
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The CDC explains that Burkholderia pseudomallei is the cause of the disease Melioidosis, also called Whitmore’s disease, an infectious disease that can infect humans or animals. The bacteria is usually found in contaminated soil and water. It is spread to humans and animals through direct contact with the contaminated source.
Melioidosis is predominately a disease of tropical climates, especially in Southeast Asia and northern Australia where it is widespread. However, B. psuedomallei was also found in the environment along the Gulf Coast of Mississippi in the United States in 2022. CDC And state partners are investigating to determine how widespread the bacteria is within the continental United States.
People who drink excessively and diabetics are prone to contracting the disease.
Julia Petras, an epidemic intelligence service officer with CDC’s National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, told HealthDay News, “It is an environmental organism that lives naturally in the soil, and typically freshwater in certain areas around the world. Mostly in subtropical and tropical climates.”
“This is one of those diseases that is also called the great mimicker because it can look like a lot of different things,” Petras added. “It’s greatly under-reported and under-diagnosed and under-recognized — we often like to say that it’s been the neglected, neglected tropical disease.”
There are antibiotics that can treat this, but they must be taken for months and people will not know that they need treatment until after they are already sick.
