Laboratory technician Ruth Rutledge packages cerebrospinal fluid of the three confirmed meningitis cases in Minnesota to send to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta for further testing.
Normally, the reference lab works on difficult samples sent in from state health departments, while the research lab works on research projects. But the scale of this outbreak means those projects are mostly being shelved at the moment.
"The scale is much, much bigger than we would normally work with," said research lab team leader Ana Litvintseva said. "We are working every weekend and people are here 12 to 13 hours at a time and we're testing samples nonstop."
___
Follow Brumback at http://www.twitter.com/katebrumback .
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Reader Comments (