Two more die from encephalitis

BOSTON (AP) – A 5-year-old girl from Halifax and an 83-year-old man from Kingston have died after being diagnosed with the mosquito-borne eastern equine encephalitis, bringing the number of human EEE cases in Massachusetts this year to three.

The girl became ill Aug. 26, and died Sept. 4, public health officials said. Lab tests later identified the disease, although the results of a final test are pending. The man became ill on Aug. 21 and died five days later. Tests confirmed the disease a week after he died.

It wasn’t clear how or when the two victims contracted the virus, said Dr. Al DeMaria, Department of Public Health Director of Communicable Disease Control. He released few other details and declined to identify them by name, saying the department needed to protect their privacy.

“Obviously this is a horrendous situation for these families to have something like this happen,” he said.

Last week, the health department announced that a 63-year-old Duxbury woman had contracted the state’s first human case of the disease this summer. The dangerous virus also turned up in four New Hampshire residents in recent weeks; none have died.

As of last week, the state had tested around 120,000 mosquitos for EEE, and only 15 of those insects tested positive for the virus.