By Tom Wilemon / The Tennessean
Four more people have died in the national outbreak of fungal
meningitis linked to contaminated steroid injections, but none of those
deaths was in Tennessee.
Update numbers released today by the U.S.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say five more people have
been sickened in Tennessee, including one new case of meningitis.
Infections
in Tennessee now total 145 - five more than last week. Four of the new
cases are injection site infections. One is a patient sickened with
meningitis in addition to a surgical site infection.
Nationwide,
the toll of those sickened rose to 678, up from 664 last week. Minnesota
reported its first death. Another death occurred in Michigan, where 12
people have now died. Two more people died in Indiana, increasing the
death toll there to nine.
Tennessee still leads the nation in the number of deaths with 14.