#CRAFTING DEAD MAP CDC SERIES#

The CDC says many of the cases have been mild, but some people had strokes.Ī meeting is held each morning to review overnight developments and plot a course of action for the day, and another at the end of the day summarizes the day's developments and looks ahead to the next day. They planned to continue trying to reach every person to see if they've had problems and to warn them to be on the lookout for symptoms, which can include severe headache, nausea, dizziness and fever. This strain is caused by a fungus that is common in dirt and grasses - people routinely come into contact with it without getting sick - but it has never before been identified as the cause of meningitis.īy Friday morning, officials believed they had reached about 90 percent of those who were potentially affected, Jernigan said. But it is usually caused by bacteria, and it is very unusual to see it in patients with normal immune systems, Jernigan said. Meningitis, an inflammation of the membranes surrounding the brain and spinal cord, is not uncommon. 'So, treatment recommendations, diagnostic recommendations are all going to be new, and we're learning as we go on this one.' John Jernigan, a CDC medical epidemiologist who is leading the clinical investigation team for the outbreak response. 'This is a very unusual infection,' said Dr. It is likely isolated to the contaminated steroid, produced by the New England Compounding Center in Framingham, Mass.

#CRAFTING DEAD MAP CDC SERIES#

But it's not a race against a fast-spreading illness like avian flu or SARS - or even the fictional virus the CDC fails to unravel in the popular TV series 'The Walking Dead.' Unlike those outbreaks, this strain of meningitis isn't contagious and doesn't spread between people. There is a sense of urgency - people are dying, and lives could be saved if those who are sickened get treated in time. More than 200 people in 14 states have been sickened, including 15 who have died. Overall, dozens of people are working day and night to bring the outbreak under control. Workers sit at rows of computers, gathering data, advising doctors and reaching out to thousands of people who may have been exposed. There's a low hum of voices as employees work the phones, talking to health officials, doctors and patients who received potentially contaminated pain injections believed to be at the root of the outbreak. Not far away in another building is the emergency operations center, which is essentially the war room. In another room, another researcher uses what looks like a long, pointed eye dropper to suck up DNA samples that will be tested for the suspect fungus. Scattered across the carefully landscaped main campus of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are the staff on the front lines fighting a rare outbreak of fungal meningitis: A scientist in a white lab coat peers through a microscope at fungi on a glass slide.

Crafting dead map cdc