Why did five patients in the same hospital come down with a rare blood infection?

As an infectious disease doctor, Nasia Safdar is a detective of sorts at the University of Wisconsin Hospital in Madison. She tracks the patterns of infections, from the type of illness to the organism at its root, and in spring 2014, she noticed something odd: A cluster of bloodstream infections caused by an uncommon, and potentially deadly, bacteria.

The microbe, Serratia marcescens, can infect the lungs, bladder, blood, and skin, and usually causes a few infections per year at Safdar’s hospital; some studies estimate that about 1 out people fall prey to a blood infection from the bacteria annually. So it was strange that five cases had occurred in just five weeks, and Safdar did a double take.