On July 12, a 5-year-old boy in Georgia arrived at an emergency department following several days of sickness. He'd been vomiting, was weak and had a sore throat. His heart rate was unusually fast. His fever spiked to more than 102 degrees.
Doctors admitted the child to the hospital, where later in the night his breathing became labored and he tested positive for COVID-19. He received treatment, but did not improved, and within four days of hospitalization, he died.
An autopsy later detected the coronavirus in his lungs and upper airways. But it also showed something surprising: bacteria called Burkholderia pseudomallei in the boy's lungs, liver, spleen and brain.
That finding would eventually lead investigators to solve three other cases of Burkholderia pseudomallei infection that occurred earlier in the year in three different states. Details of all four cases were published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.
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The cases were first made public in October, when the CDC issued an alert about the aromatherapy spray and the Consumer Product Safety Commission announced that Walmart was recalling nearly 4,000 bottles of the product, as well as five other scents under the same product name: lemon and mandarin; lavender; peppermint; lime and eucalyptus; and sandalwood and vanilla.
