MOUNT HOREB, Wis. – A Dane County official says a Mount Horeb High School student has died of bacterial meningitis.
Thomas Schlenker is the director of the Dane County Public Health Department. He says the 16-year-old girl died Saturday.
Schlenker says investigators are talking with relatives and trying to determine who had close contact with the teen.
The death comes less than two weeks after a University of Wisconsin-Madison student died from the same illness. Schlenker says that's a "surprising coincidence" but says he doesn't believe there's a widespread threat.
He tells WISC-TV these kinds of similarities can crop up when dealing with a disease as random as this one.
Bacterial meningitis causes swelling of the membrane that covers the brain or spinal cord.
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