Meningitis kills local teen

A 16-year-old Oroville high school student died June 11 of meningococcal meningitis, the Butte County Public Health Department confirmed this week to the CN&R. The girl was treated at Oroville Hospital, according to May Thao, a nursing supervisor for the department’s communicable diseases program.

Public health officials are confident they acted swiftly enough to contain the highly contagious disease. They contacted everyone the girl may have had close contact with. Meningitis is spread through saliva—as through kissing or coughing into the air, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There is a vaccine.

Meningitis is increasingly rare in the United States, where there were 350 cases in 2017, 45 of them fatal.