An unidentified respiratory illness has claimed two lives out of the seven people who were infected with the illness over the last one week in Alabama.
An unidentified respiratory illness has claimed two lives out of the seven people who were infected with the illness over the last one week in Alabama. According to a press release by the Alabama Department of Public Health, the unidentified illness is not the bird flu or the new coronavirus. No connections between the patients of this disease who are between the age of 20 and 80 have been found either.
Dr. Mary McIntyre, an assistant state health officer at the Alabama Department of Public Health, said that while the illness is certainly not a new mutation of any known influenza virus, two patients diagnosed with the illness did test positive when checked for the H1N1 strain of the flu.
ADPH Bureau of Clinical Laboratories and CDC's Respiratory, where the samples of the infected patients are being further tested have advised staff taking care of them to use respiratory precautions like N95 masks. The Alabama Department of Public Health has also cautioned people with fever, cough or shortness of breath to contact their health care providers.
"We're only aware of the Southeast, but we don't know - we haven't received reports from anywhere else," spokeswoman McIntyre said in a statement. "That's why we're trying to get the information out."
