Berkeley’s first leptospirosis death in more than a decade has health officials sounding the alarm over rats and delayed medical care. City authorities say a person living in a rat-infested RV died of the infection in May after waiting weeks, possibly months, to seek treatment; a housemate was also infected but survived after a long hospital stay, per SFGate. Vector control teams removed nearly 200 rats from the RV before it was destroyed, and officials called the case an “extreme situation.” City manager Paul Buddenhagen said the pair were “trapping, feeding and breeding wild rats.”
The RV was parked about a mile from a homeless encampment where rat-linked leptospirosis was previously detected and linked to illness in two dogs, per the Mercury News. However, these were the first human cases of leptospirosis in Berkeley in more than a decade. In humans, the bacterial illness, spread through contact with contaminated rat urine, typically starts with flu-like symptoms and can later damage the kidneys, liver, lungs, and other organs.
UC San Francisco infectious disease expert Dr. Peter Chin-Hong called the death a preventable tragedy, noting “nobody should die of lepto” because standard antibiotics can treat it if caught early, per SFGate. Buddenhagen said the risk to the public remains “extremely low,” per People. Still, Berkeley Public Health is urging clinicians to think of leptospirosis when seeing patients with relevant exposure and symptoms, warning that unfamiliarity with the disease—and patients’ reluctance to seek prompt care—can turn a treatable infection into a life-threatening one.