Here’s a reason to postpone travel plans to Germany: A new kind of E. coli bacterium has been discovered and has already killed 18 people and infected more than 1,500, according to the BBC.

BBC:

The World Health Organization said the variant had “never been seen in an outbreak situation before.”

Scientists at the Beijing Genomics Institute in China are also reported as saying the new form was “highly infectious and toxic”.

The Health Protection Agency said it was likely to be a new variant of the rare strain O104 – possibly with a newly acquired ability to infect large numbers of people.

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